Abstract
This article considers how animals are presented in Lygia Fagundes Telles’s writing, evaluating thematic choices, such as loneliness, cruelty or pessimism. This study analyses the significant role of the bestiary in her works, where the author uses talking, fantastic and symbolic animals to offer a critical portrait of a rich and complex bourgeois society peopled by a great variety of characters. Moreover, this study analyses the originality of Telles’ novels and short stories, noting the constant presence of literary animals as a fictional device, as a symbolic representation of society and as a way of questioning the value of social norms, ethical values and human’s own invention as civilized beings, drawing attention to the unnatural world we have created for ourselves.
Keywords:
Lygia Fagundes Telles; fiction; bestiary; human condition