Grandes casas de pedra: o corpo, a terra e a memória na ficção de Chenjerai Hove
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2013-12-23
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Universidade Federal de Goiás
Resumo
The present dissertation will analyze the relations established between the Body, the Land and the Memory in three novels of the Zimbabwean poet and novelist Chenjerai Hove: Bones (1988), Shadows (1991) e Ancestors (1996). The study of the novels revealed the deep relation that the natives of Rhodesia, nowadays called Zimbabwe, had with their lands and their ancestors. The objective of this paper is to present the profound changes that happened in the culture of the Shona ethnicity after the arrival of the colonizers and the missionaries in the end of the XIX Century. The perspective adopted to this criticism observes in each of the novels the characters’ native bodies in a intense struggle between two misbalanced forces that used to be the fundaments of the ancient Zimbabwean reality. In one side there is the Land, considered holy because of its mystical aspect. The Land carries the umbilical cords of every newborn and the bones of all deceased, and it is the home of the ancestors, called Pasí. On the other side rest the Ancestors, responsible for the accumulation of knowledge. The Ancestors represent the collective memory of the Shona people; they connect the individuals to nature due to their transcendence. With the Ancestors each Shona can talk to the land and be heard through the religious ears of their ancient forefathers. However, when the colonizers arrived, called those without knees because of their pants, they
imposed, with violence, a whole new culture to that ancient model of existence. This work will evaluate the consequences of the imposition of the colonizer’s culture, present in every page of each novel; what caused the loss of local religious traditions, deeply rooted moral behaviors, farming techniques and so many other aspects of the colonized culture. For the Body, the physical violence, the imposition of the English language and the prohibition of the local dialects; for the Land, the new and imported profit-driven farming cultures; for the Memory, the imposition of Christianity. Because of those
material and immaterial wounds the new generations are forced to recover their ancestors’ memory by recreating an updated version of their past. Following this track, this study also dedicates its pages to the observation of the subaltern and peripheral position of the black Zimbabwean woman, being sexually and intellectually discriminated by the patrilinear system in a society that must evolve to solve their own cultural problems of discrimination as well as those created by the colonization.
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Zimbábue , Literatura , Corpo , Terra , Memória , Colonialismo , Póscolonialismo , Zimbabwe , Literature , Body , Land , Memory , Colonialism , Postcolonialism
Citação
BRITO, Gustavo Santana Miranda. Grandes casas de pedra: o corpo, a terra e a memória na ficção de Chenjerai Hove. 2013. 128 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Letras e Linguística) - Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, 2013.