The Laughter Coupled with Distancing

Interconnections with the Short Story “Jacinto” by Alphonsus de Guimaraens, the Candide: or Optimism by Voltaire and Nuances of an Alphonsus Humorist in Archives

Abstract

Abstract: This article deals with the laughter coupled with distancing, interconnections with the short story “Jacinto (recordações de Vila Rica)” by Alphonsus de Guimaraens and the book Candide: or optimism by Voltaire, also seeks to draw a humorous profile of the poet Alphonsus based on the archives of the Casa Alphonsus Guimaraens Museum. The two authors lived at different time but ended up approaching their writings. One was a philosopher, playwright and historian and the other was a symbolist poet and both surrendered to the comic and created works that are situated in the humorous field. There is an existence that needs to be delineated in this sense in the case of Alphonsus, the author highlighted in this work, since there is a great amount of creations related to laughter in the manuscripts and other documents of the Casa Alphonsus de Guimaraens Museum, and most of people knew him as a taciturn poet, the “solitary of Mariana”. In general, this study seeks to investigate how Voltaire in Candide: or optimism and Alphonsus in “Jacinto (recordações de Vila Rica)” use an irony to provoke laughter, something that with a deeper evaluation translates a disappointment with social and existential reality generating a kind of detachment. Finally based on research in historical documents it seeks to find a memory of this other facet of Alphonsus. The book O riso e o risível: na história do pensamento, of Verena Alberti and the chapter “Rabelais and the history of laughter” in, Rabelais and his world of Mikhail Bakhtin, complete the investigation.

Keywords: Alphonsus Guimaraens; museum; Voltaire; laughter; Jacinto (recordações de Vila Rica; Cândido, ou o otimismo.