Body, Guilt and Shame in Octávio de Faria’s Mundos Mortos

Abstract

Abstract: This article analyzes Octávio de Faria’s novel Mundos mortos, published in 1937, critically labeled as intimate literature, about adolescent characters and their dilemmas around sexuality at a homosocial place, the college of Catholic priests. What draws attention in this author’s production, and is expressed in the fictional texts, the dilemmas of his characters, his diary and his correspondences, is the constant conflict between him being a fervent Catholic and, at the same time, having the presence striking feature of homoerotism, which is directly linked to the production of the bodies of the characters. These docile, or rebellious, strange, different bodies put themselves in negative positions with respect to the heteronormative pattern of their time, encountering the constant feelings of guilt and shame instituted by Catholicism. Analyzes how the writer represented the body in the face of Catholic dogma, the representation of homosexuality, and how this shows in his novel, using theorists such as Eve Kosofski Sedgwick, Michel Foucault and Judith Butler.

Keywords: Brazilian literature; Octávio de Faria; body; homoeroticism; catholicism.