LITERARY AND TRANSMEDIA SURVIVAL OF CLASSICAL CHARACTERS: DOCTOR BENINUS AND VITÓRIA ACAUÃ IN THE UNIVERSE OF BRASILIANA STEAMPUNK UNIVERSE

Abstract

In this article, we analyze the transmedia series Brasiliana Steampunk, a series that rewrites the Brazilian canon of the 19th century – both the uncanny and the realistic – based on the reconfiguration of characters and the repositioning of narrative modes and settings. Our focus is the survival of two canonical characters from the 19th century, namely Vitória Acauã, created by Inglês de Sousa in Contos Amazônicos, and Doutor Benignus, idealized by Augusto Emílio Zaluar in a homonymous work. From the origins of these two characters, we approach their respective intertextual and intermedial repositioning in the case of a series produced in the 21st century, resulting in an update of the Brazilian literary tradition and canon in a context of popular fiction produced for new technological supports, in physical and digital materialities. As theoretical basis for this investigation, we start from the concept of afterlife of literary characters, by Carlos Reis, in addition to approaching the transmedia aspect of the series from the concept coined by Henry Jenkins and the steampunk genre as “recycling”, an idea defended by French critics Jean-Jacques Girardot and Fabrice Mereste.