A TEOLOGIA ÀS AVESSAS EM CONTOS MACHADIANOS

Abstract

This study aims to explain the upside down theology presents in stories by Machado de Assis. We verified how religion and the human character demonstration are themes from Machado's tales, which describe a critical and social narrative about themes as religiosity, superhuman characters, as also human condition. These themes guide the understanding of a counter theology in “A Igreja do Diabo”, “Adão e Eva” and “O Sermão do Diabo”, works that show the discourse, the promises and a worldview that is adverse to the JudeoChristian religion. Tracing and situating the subject and his works in the artistic and literary movement called Realism, we are based on Fundamental Theology, by René Latourelle and Rino Fisichella, and on Bakhtin's Theory of Carnivalization. The objective is to understand how the Machado's narrator uses artifice and techniques of literary production to deconstruct dogmatic doctrines in Brazilian literature. We found, therefore, that Machado reread the varied faces of the human being through the focus of social masking and the construction of complex characters through an opposite theology in his excerpts. Such works, which remain alive and timeless, show universal aspects of human nature, thus aiming to make their readers reflect critically on the human condition and how social relations unfold in their historical context.