Religious counterpoints in Clarissa, by Erico Verissimo

Abstract

the novel Clarissa, by Erico Verissimo, first published in 1933, introduces the reader to a gallery of human types which represent a number of identities, concentrated in a single space,  tia Zina’s inn. Within this Brazilian social microcosm, in a historical context very close to the First World War, to the Wall Street Crash and to the Vargas Era, the author constructs characters that could have existed in this period, that could have been your acquaintances, like the jewish Levinsky and the protestant Gamaliel. In this initiation novel, Verissimo already invests in the
technique of counterpoint, a recurrent resource in all his fiction, in order to lead the reader to a dialectics about historical, economical, religious and affective issues. Therefore, this paper proposes a literary analysis of jewish and protestant representations, articulated to this counter position.