Topophobia and topophilia in The Countryside, The Fifteen and Dried Lives: interdisciplinary contributions to Human Ecology

Abstract

The works The Countryside (1875/2002), by José de Alencar, The Fifteen (1930/2012), by Rachel de Queiroz, and Dried Lives (1938/2013), by Graciliano Ramos, signal a fertile contribution to the investigation of human–environment relations, raising interdisciplinary imbrications in the representation of the countryside and of the backwoods. In this context, this research aims to investigate, under the method of Discourse Analysis of the French Line and the Ecocritical perspective - which studies the imbrications between Literature and Ecology -, the human-environment relations and the representations of the countryside and of the backwoods that the authors delineate in their respective works, observing the similarities and differences between them, in addition to dialoguing with the human feeling that is awakened in the dialogue with the place, with the environment, with the space and with the territory, in view of the concepts of topophobia (aversion to the physical environment) and topophilia (familiarity or attachment), proposed in 1980 by chinese geographer Yi-Fu Tuan. That said, the discourses present in the novels above, through the crossing of data, demonstrate that the countrysides show an ambivalence of relations with the environment: sometimes topophobic (amidst the scarcity of resources), sometimes topophilic, due to less miserable times. Therefore, Ecocritique is configured as a flag to unveil human-environment relations and is projected as an area of ​​interdisciplinary knowledge, dialoguing with Humanist Geography, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and other related approaches.