COMICITY, LAUGHTER AND MOCKING OF AUTHORITARIAN POWER IN THE STORY “ROSA, ROSA, ROSAE”, BY ROBERTO DRUMMOND

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to offer to the reader an analysis and interpretation of the relationships between the writing of the short story “Rosa, Rosa, Rosae”, by Roberto Drummond, the production of the humor effect and the social and political criticism of authoritarianism. For that matter, we will contextualize the short-story both in its immediate moment of production-reception – the 1970s in Brazil – and in its structural links with the articulation procedure of two dramatic conflicts in the construction of the narrated story. It is, above all, through this procedure of construction of the narrative plot that Roberto Drummond manages to produce humor and laughter in his short story, making social and political criticism reach its target: the protagonist character and, as a result of metonymy, what it represents in the context of the narrated story and in its dialogue with its historical, social, and political context. My reflection will be fundamentally based on the studies of M. Bakhtin (1987), H. Bergson (1983), F. Aguiar (1975) and R. L. Baronas (2005). The result will demonstrate how, under the action of censorship and political repression of the civil-military dictatorship, Roberto Drummond was successful in circumventing an authoritarian context that was averse to the arts and freedom of expression.