“The other is the river I follow”

Textual Psychocriticism in Teolinda Gersão

Abstract

This work intends to investigate the relationship built in O regresso de Júlia Mann a Paraty, by Teolinda Gersão with regard to Literature and Psychoanalysis, especially because they are fields that dialogue with each other, however, literature is seen as the writer’s worldview and, in turn, psychoanalysis operates by deconstructing the subject’s worldviews to reveal the structures that organize it. To study the narrative in question, psychocriticism will be applied, as it is revealed in two ways: genetic and textual psychocriticism. Genetics can be subdivided into pathographies and psychobiographies. Textual or psychoanalytic criticism is justified within the scope of literary criticism because the work is more than a set of aesthetic categories; It is also the fulfillment of the author’s unconscious desire, a kind of alchemical ritual that goes through stages during life in contact with others and human nature. Thus, Freud, Thomas Mann and Julia Mann as characters in Gerse’s narrative are a representation, an extension of the subjective life, therefore, of Teolinda Gersão herself, in the act of creation. Furthermore, authors such as: Jean Bellemin-Noel (1978), Dayan-Herzbrun (1997), Miskolci (2003), among others, will be used.