The art of self-invention in the Nove Noites novel

Abstract

The present work investigates the relations between the factual and the fictitious in the novel Nove Noites, de Bernardo Carvalho. The objective is to elucidate how the subjectivity of the characters is constructed from the symbiosis between real and invented facts. It is also analyzed how the generic classifications between literary narrative and scientific narrative (be it historiographical, anthropological or journalistic) are problematized by the way that veridical information and fictitious narrative are related in the construction of this romanesque work. For this, the analysis takes place in three levels: the trajectory of the protagonists, the process of elaboration and the metafiction proposed by the romanesque work, and, finally, the transformation of real people into fictional narrators. At the end of the research, it is observed that, in these three instances, similarities and differences, truths and illusions are combined in the construction of the image that the subjects construct to show themselves to the world.