THE CONSTITUTION OF THE TRANSCULTURAL TRAVELER: AN STUDY OF FIGURA NA SOMBRA, BY ASSIS BRASI

Abstract

The present paper focuses in the study of the novel Figura na sombra of the author, Luiz Antonio de Assis Brasil, in the intention to, beginning by the understanding of the hybrid productions of history and fiction as a critical reading mode, treat the memorial rescue of the biography of the french naturalist, Aimé Bonpland, a figure that remained on the edge of the historical records and that is now renewed by fiction. The possibility of rereading history materialized in a literary work creates multiples visions about the past time and gives personality, origin and voice to this silenced figure, showing us the opportunity to know the past by the anonymous's bias. A traveler and a great research scholar of the American fauna and flora, Bonpland was relegated to shadow and oblivion, as the title implies, who abandoned his own homeland to establish permanently in the South American extreme where he joined to the local customs, language and identity after a long period of wanderings and transits by different Latin-American countries. Thus, the narrative flirt with questions related to the identity formation, transits, crossing borders and transcultural process in which the subject along his journey is renewed in touch, in changes and in relations with distinct cultures highlighting, thereby, a pungent phenomena throughout Latin America.