O fantástico em antes do baile verde e seminário dos ratos, de Lygia Fagundes Telles

Abstract

The proposed study focuses on the works Antes do Baile Verde and Seminário dos Ratos, by Brazilian writer Lygia Fagundes Telles. Both works are collections of short stories published in the same decade, respectively in the years 1970 and 1977, and abundant in the presence of mystery themes. We propose an analytical-interpretive reading of three short stories from each work as we consider them representative of the fantastic in the author. Analyzed individually, we intertwine the fictional reading with the theoretical perceptions of scholars of the fantastic in Literature from Tzvetan Todorov (1970) and researchers of the work of Lygia Fagundes Telles such as Suênio Campos de Lucena (2007; 2008; 2017; 2018). “The hunt”, “Midnight sharp in Shanghai”, “Natal na Barca”, “As ants”, “Tigrela” and “Seminário dos Ratos” are the short stories selected for this work in which we seek to explore the presence of the fantastic in the author's writing. We highlight that in our analyzes we observed that the references for the construction of the fantastic explored by Lygia, in large part, are made up of issues contemporary to her writing, notably the inclusion of markers of the decadence of the São Paulo bourgeoisie in the face of the advance of modernization, from 1950, and the repression of the military dictatorship of the 1960s.