The brousse and its inhabitants

discussions about animals in rené maran’s work

Abstract

This paper has resulted from a series of round table presentations as part of the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of René Maran’s Batoualá, which had the goal to disseminate the writer’s work in our country. The purpose of this article is to analyze the representation of animals, mainly of dogs, in the author’s work, especially in the novel Djouma, chien de brousse (1927) and in the novella “Boum, le chien et Dog, le bouffle” (1941). In the theoretical framework, we have focused on the representation of animals and on the closeness between human and non-human beings, according to Maciel (2016), Milanesio (2020), Asaah (2008) and Constantini (2007). When we concentrated on the representation of dogs and on their relation with other beings in the narratives, we found a resemblance between the dogs and other dogs in Latin-American literature, especially to the female dog Baleia, a character in the novel Barren Lives (Vidas Secas, 1938). Accordingly, observing such closeness and the representations analyzed, we have noted the symbiosis between dog and human, beyond the mechanisms of the construction of the characters. We have also observed how such bond is part of the very constitution of the canine characters.