The joy and the yoke in Falo (1976), by Paulo Augusto
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12957/matraga.2025.85492Keywords:
Military Dictatorship, Authoritarianism, Homoeroticism, Paulo AugustoAbstract
Published in 1976, the book Falo, by Paulo Augusto, came to light at a time when Brazil was under the yoke of the Military Dictatorship (1964-1985) and brought, in its verses, themes considered pernicious in the eyes of the ruling morality of the country. In this article, we carry out an analytical-interpretative reading of poems with the objective of finding out how the Brazilian social, political and cultural conjuncture of the 1970s permeates the construction of the texts, underlining the friction between the mechanisms of oppression and control prevailing in the period and the elaboration of poetic subjectivities read as dissidents to the normative model of sexuality. The analysis of the selected poems starts from the understanding that relations between literary text and social life (Adorno, 2003; Candido, 2006; 2019) exist, formalized through aesthetic and compositional procedures decanted in the elaboration of the textual materiality. To carry out this investigation, we mobilized theoretical references that allow us to understand the sociopolitical (Schwarcz, 2019; Quinalha, 2021a; 2021b) and cultural (Alves, 2019; Ferraz, 2013) situation of the “years of lead.” Also contributing to our reflection are the dialogues with other readers of Augusto’s oeuvre, such as Mattoso (2003), Santos (2022) and Gomes Varjão (2019), and the research by Moraes (2008; 2021) on erotic literature. With the study of Paulo Augusto’s poems, we perceive the development of a poetic voice that, despite the moralistic regimes of continence, insists on proclaiming its desires, enjoying with body and soul in language, in a blatant way.
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