“But Alice, I’m still so glad we were born”: uma busca pela beleza do minimalismo na ficção de Sally Rooney

Português Português; Português Português

doi:10.12957/matraga.2026.97653

Authors

Português Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2708-0034
Português Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8183-0078

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12957/matraga.2026.97653

Keywords:

Vulnerability, ethics, solastalgia, Sally Rooney, contemporary novel

Abstract

This paper analyses Belo mundo, onde você está (2021) through the articulation of the Anthropocene, neoliberalism, and the ethics of the contemporary novel. Departing from the claim that the contemporary novel fails to respond to ecological and social collapse (Savi; Fernandes, 2025), the paper argues that Rooney’s work elaborates a situated ethics grounded in the promotion of empathic desire and in the recognition of vulnerability as a constitutive condition of community life. In dialogue with Butler (2004), Albrecht (2005), Bourdieu (1992; 2009; 2013), and Rich (1978; 1995), the article proposes a political-linguistic reading of solastalgia. This paper analyses silence and minimalism as a reflection of the contemporary political landscape and as a formal gesture of resistance. By rejecting the spectacularisation of catastrophe, the novel reinscribes intimacy as an ambivalent ethical practice. Finally, the article argues that the literary beauty evoked in the novel emerges not from the promise of overcoming the Anthropocene, but from its decolonial apprehension through an insistence on relational forms in which affection, individuality, and privacy sustain the ethics of care.

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Author Biographies

Português, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)

Luiza Khoury is an MA student in the Graduate Program in Language Studies (PPGEL) at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), where she conducts research within the “Language, Meaning and Translation” research line, supported by a scholarship from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). She holds a teaching licensed BA in Portuguese-English Language and Literature from PUC-Rio and has also pursued additional training in English at the Cambridge Academy of English and in Literature at Harvard University. She works as an English and Literature teacher, as well as a translator and proofreader. Her research is situated within the field of Translation Studies, with a particular focus on the (im)possibilities of translating and adapting silence in contemporary Irish literature, in dialogue with intersemiotic translation and adaptation studies. She is a member of the research group “Towards a Historiography of Translations and Adaptations of the Shakespearean Canon,” coordinated by Professor Doctor Leonardo Bérenger, and also takes part in research on the circulation, rewriting, and reconfiguration of literary narratives in contexts of translation and adaptation. Her research interests include intersemiotic translation, adaptation, intermediality, and the relationships between literature, culture, and ideology.

Português, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)

Professor do Departamento de Letras da Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), onde atua na Graduação em Letras e no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Linguagem (PPGEL). Doutor em Letras pela UFRJ, desenvolve pesquisa no campo dos Estudos Shakespearianos. É membro da International Shakespeare Association (Shakespeare Institute/Universidade de Birmingham), lidera o Grupo de Pesquisa (CNPq) “Por uma historiografia das traduções e adaptações do cânone shakespeariano”, e integra o GT da Anpoll “Dramaturgia e Teatro”. Vem publicando ensaios geralmente focados na dramaturgia sha-kespeariana e em seus diálogos com os Estudos Queer e da Tradução. É também bolsista de produtividade PUC-Rio.

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