João Guimarães Rosa : o contista de Sagarana

Abstract

G.Rosa's Sagarana is a synthesis of the European narrative tradition with particularly Brazilian habits of informal storytelling. This essay points out a few examples of the uncountable number of "models" that Rosa transforms and assimilates in his short stories, considered as a particular version of Brazilian sensibility. "O burrinho pedres" is analyzed as the result of a sort of "French connection": a hybrid recreation of the achievements of the short story (Maupassant) and the dramatizing essayism (Michelet) practised in 19th century France, as received through Brazilian intermediaries (Simoes Lopes Neto, Euclides da Cunha, Paulo Prado).