Representations of fear in a short story from Júlia Lopes de Almeida’s Ânsia eterna

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss how the feeling of fear is developed in Júlia Lopes de Almeida’s short story “A rosa branca” (“The white rose”), which is part of the work Ânsia eterna (2019). For this purpose, we present a brief theoretical compilation of the main icons in fantastic literature, with a focus on the feeling of fear, which is a feature of the fantastic short story. Besides, we bring to light the writings of Júlia Lopes de Almeida, who is an important 19th-century writer forgotten by literary historiography. Our study will be based on Todorov’s (1992) considerations on the fantastic, as well as Cesarani’s (2006) perception regarding the construction of this type of narrative. Finally, we connect our research to Julio França’s (2011, 2012), Roas’s (2014), and Delumeau’s (1989) notions of fear.