ECOGÓTICO E ECO-HORROR NA LITERATURA BRASILEIRA

Abstract

The relationship between human beings and nature has undergone significant changes over the last three decades. With the emergence of Ecocriticism, a field of study has been established to investigate the cultural relationships between human beings and the non-human world (animals, plants, minerals, climates, ecosystems). In Gothic and horror fiction, the depiction of the environment, especially the forest, is often a source of fear and anxiety. Even in Gothic-Romantic narratives in which there is a binarism between civilisation and nature, natural spaces are not always places of belonging, but of crisis and estrangement. This paper aims to explore these ambiguous relationships in depth, outlining what has come to be called “ecogothic” and, subsequently, “eco-horror” within the context of Brazilian literature, and exemplifying these manifestations by analysing three narratives: the short stories ‘Valsa fantástica’ by Afonso Celso and ‘O areal’ by Florence Bernard, and the novel Corpos secos by Marcelo Ferroni, Samir Machado de Machado, Luisa Geisler and Natalia Borges Polesso.