ABSTRACT
This article derives from the research which resulted in the doctoral thesis Antonio Jose da Silva: a dramaturgy made of conventions.1 1 Article derived from the doctoral thesis Antonio Jose da Silva: a dramaturgy made of conventions [Antônio José da Silva: uma dramaturgia de convenções], defended in 2017 as part of the Postgraduate Programme in Portuguese Literature at the Department of Classical and Vernacular Languages, School of Philosophy, Literature and Human Sciences, University of São Paulo, with FAPESP and CAPES funding, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Flavia Maria Corradin. The research presented in this article was carried out during an internship period at the Madrid Theatre Institute, Philology Faculty, Complutense University of Madrid, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Javier Huerta Calvo, also director of the aforementioned Institute, with FAPESP funding through the Internship Programme for Research Abroad (BEPE/FAPESP). It discusses the principle of carnivalization in Iberian theatre from different theoretical perspectives, including that of Mikhail Bakhtin. Through an analysis of the stock character of the gracioso, the carnivalized servant figure originally introduced by the dramatists of the Spanish Golden Age, the intention is to problematize the class tensions and discursive artifices of the tragicomic narrative. This analysis is based on the theory for studying Iberian baroque texts developed in Spain at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, and which is particularly present in Hermenegildo (1995). This article therefore examines the ways in which this stock character, either in its traditional male version or as its female counterpart - the maid -, participates in the development of dramatic intrigue, amplifying the impact of the central issues of a given play’s main plot. To demonstrate the aforementioned theory, this article will examine the play Precipício de Faetonte by 18th-century Portuguese playwright Antonio José da Silva. In this work the actions of these low-status characters can be seen to be interwoven with the development of the central intrigue, a fact which, from a Bakhtinian perspective, can be interpreted as a form of carnivalization explored by the Iberian theatre of the period.
KEYWORDS:
Carnivalization; Character; Theater; Tragicomedy; Dramatic Literature