Entre os Lírios das Grutas Musgosas e Sombrias: Uma Leitura do Erotismo Libertino no Conto “Memórias de um Leque”, de Júlia Lopes de Almeida

Abstract

In this research, we aim to verify the presence of eroticism in “Memórias de um Leque”, by Júlia Lopes de Almeida (1862-1934), a narrative belonging to the collection Corpo descoberto: contos eróticos brasileiros (1852-1922). The text was chosen for having the signature of the only woman listed in the anthology cited and for presenting a bias that converges with the beginning of Brazilian erotic production of the fin de siècle. Due to the adaptation to the moral austerity of the end of the 1800s – emphatically with regard to women –, eroticism occurs by allusion, as it happens with the narrator, which is a fan, in analogy to the phallus. About the theoretical framework that supports the research presented here, reflections by Beauvoir (1967), Maingueneau (2010), Moraes (2015; 2018a; 2018b) and Almeida (2018a), among others, are used. As for the approach, the methodology is exploratory, qualitative and bibliographical. In the end, we verify that, in the questioning of the libertine canon, a search for female emancipation in Brazilian literature of the 19th century.