The Fairies There

Fairy Magic in Tales “The Girl There” and “The Hunting to the Moon” by Guimarães Rosa

Abstract

This article intends to read the character “Nhinhinha” from the tale “The Girl There” by Guimarães Rosa (1972), under the image of the fairy character figure. Such narrative is part of the book First Stories by the writer from Minas Gerais, Brazil. To complement the study regarding the image of the fairy, this work intends to analyze another narrative by Rosa (1970), the short story “The hunting to the moon”, which is part of the book Bird, Word, and who also presents as a character a girl who refers so much to her own “Nhinhinha”, to the fairy figure, this wonderful creature from the popular imagination present in traditional narratives. This reading will use theoretical writings by J.R.R.Tolkien (2015), Italo Calvino (2010), Kátia Canton (1994), in addition to bringing theoretical postulations by Maurice Blanchot (2011) about the literary space of magic, the imaginary and the place of childhood. Scores by Giorgio Agamben (2007) will also be brought with regard to the fairy figure as a helper, that is, an aid character, that provides another view in relation to what has already been seen daily. Other theoretical postulations will be raised in relation to the fairy character brought from Celtic mythology, and traditional fairy tales, to understand the fluid form between life, death, magic, charm and strangeness, that the characters of these girls present in Rosa’s narratives.