Looking back and forward: trip perspectives in “Tutameia Terceiras Estórias”, by João Guimarães Rosa

Abstract

Coming and going is a right guaranteed to every citizen. Moving around is characteristic of the animal species; choosing paths, tracing a route to travel, is a human characteristic. The article aims to identify, in the itinerary of the characters in the book Tutameia Terceiras Estórias, the motives that push them on to travel, as well as to observe the spatial trace of that route. It occurs that among these characters the journey becomes diverse in its configuration, as they are not only real road trips, by land and river, by horseback riding or boating. The theme of the Tutameia trip is also onfigured by the metaphor of looking forward and backward, which reverses the action of the readers themselves in crossing back and forth, a right to and duty to assured by a narrator. We suggest an intratextual analysis of the work of Rosa, interpreting riddles that intertwine between characters from different stories, in the metaphorical representation of the trip.