A Natureza como Personagem nas Narrativas de A Cidade do Vento e Elias Portolu de Grazia Deledda

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the use of landscape description and the appropriation of elements of nature as characters in the novels The city of wind and Elias Portolu by Grazia Deledda (1871-1936). The research, of a hermeneutic nature (GADAMER, 2003), is carried out from a socio-interactional perspective of discourse (GUMPERZ, 1982) and reading as a process that combines schematic and systemic knowledge (WIDDOWSON, 1984, 1993; SANTOS, 2022b, 2022b). The analysis investigates how in The city of wind, nature is one of its main characters. The wind, which already appears in the title of the book, is one of its driving forces: it is what moves and governs the lives of people in the nameless city where the plot takes place and can be read as a metaphor for destiny, but also as the force that governs the cycles of life. In the reading of Elias Portolu, the analysis focuses on how some of the elements that seem to want to lead Elias Portolu (the central character of the plot) to the path of happiness appear in the form of nature itself, through the detailed descriptions of forests, meadows and other elements of the Sardinian landscape, or by thought representing a primitive wisdom, closely linked to the forces of nature, which may predate Christianity, or even classical thought, and which survives on the island of Sardinia, as it is represented by Deledda in her narrative, through characters such as zio Martinu. Reading the two proposed novels points to the perception that Grazia Deledda uses nature as a character in her narratives on three levels: 1) the level of detailed description of the element of nature itself; 2) that of nature reflecting the emotional state of the characters and; 3) the level at which the character enters into symbiosis with nature.