O feminino mítico em contos peregrinos de Gabriel García Márquez

Abstract

In the present research, we analyze the book Strange Pilgrims: Twelve Stories (1992), by the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, from the perspective of mythology and the feminine. For such, we propose an excerpt from this corpus, focusing on three of the twelve stories in question, namely: I sell my dreams, Maria dos Prazeres and Miss Forbes’s summer of happiness. All of those starring strong, tempestuous, and striking women, feminine representations that establish close relationships with the myth. Thus, we might question: What do they symbolize? What do the characters names represent? Where is the myth in each plot and what is its role? To answer such questions, this investigation was based on the propositions of theorists and mythologists such as Joseph Campbell, Eleazar Mielietinski, and Northrop Frye, as well as Jungian Conceptions. The considered hypothesis is that, through an intercultural crossing between Latin America and Europe, the writer García Márquez reveals fictional individuals with historical echoes, surrounded by the contradictorily unusual banality of magical realism, the identity mark of his literary texts and of the artistic expression in Latin America culture, means by which the myth is expressed in his creations. To emphasize this issue, we also rely on his critical fortune, which guided us towards understanding how symbolic elements such as dreams, death, serpents and waters are commonly present in his creative repertoire, as well as in mythical narratives that constitute the western imaginary.