“We Brazilians do not have the Middle Ages, or Celtic antiquities, or the mysteries of the Orient. […] The Atlantic and a glorious life filled with sun and light come between us and the myths seeping from the soil on which the French, the English, the German, and the Italian live and on which their ancestors lived. […] Demonology […] does not identify elements within American joy that might favor the emergence of a dark and gloomy aesthetic era.” This analysis is by Araripe Júnior (1848–1911), one of the country’s most important nineteenth-century literary critics. According to the intellectual from Ceará, European Gothic style was incompatible with Brazilian culture and literature. Twenty-first-century researchers, however, have endeavored to overturn this belief and prove that the dark worldview conjured by horror literature was also present in the tropics.
An example of this is the anthology Tênebra: Narrativas brasileiras de horror (1839–1899) (Darkness: Brazilian horror stories [1839–1899]), organized by Júlio França, a literature theory professor at Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), and by the writer and translator Oscar Nestarez, author of the dissertation titled “Uma história da literatura de horror no Brasil: Fundamentos e autorias” (A history of horror literature in Brazil: The foundations and authors), defended last year at the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences at the University of São Paulo (FFLCH-USP). In the book published by Fósforo in 2022, the pair seek to show that Brazilian literature has, in fact, been haunted by fantastical and supernatural beings, such as ghosts and witches, or frightening human characters, such as vengeful husbands and sadistic enslavers. With 27 stories, the collection features the work of renowned authors such as Machado de Assis (1839–1908) and Aluísio Azevedo (1857–1913). It also includes pieces by lesser-known writers, such as São Paulo native Antônio Joaquim da Rosa (1821–1866), who was also a politician, and Maria Benedita Bormann (1853–1895), a journalist from Rio Grande do Sul. The book accompanies other anthologies published in recent years, such as Contos macabros: 13 histórias sinistras da literatura brasileira (Macabre tales: 13 sinister stories from Brazilian literature; Editora Escrita Fina, 2010), organized by Lainister de Oliveira Esteves, a professor at the Federal University of Uberlândia’s Institute of History (IH-UFU).
França recounts that he began studying this genre about 15 years ago when he noticed the virtual absence of academic studies on horror literature in Brazil. “The first question was: did the literature of fear exist in Brazil? And, if it did, why was it ignored?,” recalls the professor, who is coordinating the Gothic Studies research group at UERJ, certified by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). The hundreds of fictional narratives published between the 1830s and 1940s, which França and his pupils found in the country’s libraries, were first compiled on the Tênebra (Darkness) website, a digital collection created in 2021 that is still being updated by the group’s members.
Some Brazilian horror stories are social critiques and denounce the extreme violence of slavery
According to the pair of researchers, the short stories and novels that explored fear as an aesthetic effect faced prejudice from nineteenth-century Brazilian literary critics. This was because, at the time, Brazil had recently become independent from Portugal, and critics valued realistic narratives that explored themes linked to national identity. Thus, horror literature suffered from a lack of formal recognition, surviving on the fringes of the literary mainstream. “[Literary critic and USP professor] Antonio Candido [1918–2017] highlights that our literature is educational, that it wants to help us understand what Brazil is. The literature of fear, focused on the more macabre and negative aspects of existence, had no place in this literary arena whose mission was to shape a country’s identity,” says França.
The response to Álvares de Azevedo’s (1831–1852) work is emblematic in this sense and, according to researchers, reveals the disdain with which literary scholars in Brazil treated scary stories. By exploring elements of Gothic tradition in books such as Noite na taverna (Night in the tavern; 1855), a novel with scenes of violence, orgies, incest, and cannibalism, and Macario (1852), a story about a student who makes a deal with the devil, Azevedo’s work (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue nº 307) was considered a deviation from the country’s literary tradition. Today, however, we know that the author, who died at the age of 20, was not the only one of his time to deep-dive into horror. In fact, he was not even the first. As early as the 1830s, stories with dark elements circulated in newspapers and magazines, often in pamphlet form, such as the short story “A missa do galo” (Midnight mass), which opens the anthology Tênebra. Written by Maciel da Costa, about whom França and Nestarez found little information, the story about ghosts and adultery was published in 1839 in Correio das Modas, a magazine geared towards women, more than a decade before Azevedo’s literary debut.
In literature, the Gothic style was inaugurated in England in 1764, with the publication of The Castle of Otranto, a novel by British author Horace Walpole (1717–1797). In the following decades, writers such as Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823) began exploring elements that became characteristic of the genre, such as medieval times, haunted castles, stories that go back in time, and supernatural elements, explains Sandra Guardini Teixeira Vasconcelos, an English and comparative literature professor at FFLCH-USP. Throughout the nineteenth century, the vast number of international publications imported from Europe contributed to the introduction of Gothic elements in novels and stories written in Brazil. “In nineteenth-century England, literary realism prevailed. Gothic literature was not hegemonic, neither in Brazil nor England. Here, it circulated among our novelists almost like an underground, clandestine current. Machado de Assis himself quotes Ann Radcliffe, for example, in one piece,” she says. Even a prose writer such as José de Alencar (1829–1877), Vasconcelos continues, who mapped Brazil in “indianista” [Brazilian literary genre of the 19th century that idealizes the simple life of the South American Indian], urban, historical, and regional novels, drew on these resources. “There are Gothic elements in the novels O tronco do ipê [The trunk of the Ipê tree; 1871], Til [1872], and As minas de prata [The silver mines, 1865]. They are not predominant in Alencar’s prose, but they are there,” the scholar points out.
João MontanaroGothicism is at the root, for example, of what is known as modern horror literature. According to Nestarez, it was in the twentieth century that this type of fiction began to impose itself as an autonomous territory thanks to some seminal works, such as the essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature” by American writer H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). In the essay, the author of books such as The Call of Cthulhu (1928) proposes guidelines for the genre and argues that “atmosphere is the all-important thing, for the final criterion of authenticity is not the dovetailing of a plot but the creation of a given sensation.” According to Nestarez, it is challenging to define precise cut-off points for the concept. “In the historiographical recapitulation presented in the essay, Lovecraft mentions works from antiquity and the medieval period that are permeated by this type of aesthetic. He used to say that the literary expression of fear ‘has always existed and always will.’”
With regards to how it was received by Brazilian critics in the nineteenth century, another misconception highlighted by contemporary scholars is the idea that horror fiction was detached from the social issues of its time. Because they disregarded realism conventions, these pieces were often read as a kind of escapist and depoliticized form of entertainment. “Horror stories rely on allegories and supernatural elements, but they manage to get to the heart of what we are as a country more than realistic narratives,” Nestarez argues. “What does an enslaved Black character who, after being tortured and killed, returns as a ghost, say about us?” According to the researcher, “Conto fantástico” (Amazing tale), by Américo Lobo (1841–1903), featured in the anthology, is an example of a story that combines social criticism with fantasy elements. Published in 1861 in the São Paulo newspaper Fórum Literário, the story takes place on a farm where Teresa, a Black woman believed to be a witch, curses the couple who owns the property after the death of her son Sabino, a young slave.
Another story that uses horror story strategies to denounce the extreme violence of slavery is “Consciência tranquila” (Clear conscience) by Cruz e Souza (1861–1898), a central figure in Brazilian symbolism. In the plot, an enslaver reminisces on his deathbed, in a delirious monologue, about the atrocities he committed against Black men and women, including pregnant women. “Generally speaking, in Brazilian Gothic literature, there are more monstrous characters than actual monsters. Instead of a saci [a trickster and shape-shifter in Brazilian folklore] or another mythical figure, the villains are human beings acting in a frightening way,” notes Ana Paula dos Santos, author of the dissertation “A tradição feminina do gótico: Uma descrição de formas e temas nas literaturas brasileira e de língua inglesa” (The female Gothic tradition: A description of forms and themes in Brazilian and English-language literature), defended at the UERJ Institute of Letters, in 2022. “And, in this type of story, when written by women, the villain is often a man, such as the girl’s father. He doesn’t drink blood or return from the dead, but he has monstrous tendencies.”
One of the authors studied by Santos is Rio de Janeiro native Júlia Lopes de Almeida (1862–1934). In her master’s thesis, defended in 2017 at UERJ, the researcher analyzed the collection of stories titled Ânsia eterna (Eternal anxiety; 1903). According to Santos, “the writer uses Gothic poetics to describe narrative spaces, terrifying situations and, above all, to represent anxieties related to the female universe. Stories such as ‘O caso de Ruth’ [Ruth’s case], ‘As rosas’ [The roses], ‘Os porcos’ [The pigs], and ‘Sob as estrelas’ [Under the stars], portray problems arising from family relationships and domestic life, in which the protagonists are victims of physical and sexual violence.” In Tênebra, Almeida is represented by the version of the short story “A nevrose da cor: Fantasia egípcia” (The neurosis of color: Egyptian costume) published in 1889 in Rio de Janeiro’s Gazeta de Notícias. It is “one of the first stories with vampiric elements in Brazilian literature,” write França and Nestarez in the compilation’s preface.
Today, in addition to the UERJ study group led by França, there are other initiatives registered in the CNPq’s Research Group Directory that are dedicated to studying the literature of fear and its developments in contemporary production, namely: Nós do insólito: Vertentes da ficção, da teoria e da crítica, also at UERJ; Vertentes do fantástico na literatura, at São Paulo State University (UNESP); and Distopia e contemporaneidade, at Fluminense Federal University (UFF). According to Nestarez, academia’s interest in this type of work reflects the positive momentum of this genre in Brazil. Last year, the Brazilian National Library awarded its traditional literary award to the book of short stories Gótico nordestino (Northeastern Gothic; Alfaguara, 2022), by Cristhiano Aguiar from Paraíba. In addition, three years ago, the Jabuti Prize created the Entertainment Novel category, which includes works in genres such as science fiction, crime, horror, humor, suspense, and fantasy. In 2021, it awarded Corpos secos (Dry bodies; Alfaguara, 2020), a zombie story coauthored by four writers, namely, Luisa Geisler, Marcelo Ferroni, Natalia Borges Polesso, and Samir Machado de Machado. Currently, Nestarez is working with França to organize the second volume of Tênebra, scheduled for release in 2024. “This time, our focus will be on short stories written in the first half of the twentieth century. The idea, with both books, is to encompass works within this literary genre produced in Brazil over some 120 years,” he concludes.
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