“Eles se amaram de qualquer maneira”: figurações de masculinidade e homoerotismo no ambiente de trabalho em obras literárias

Obras da literatura ocidental têm em comum o conflito amoroso entre dois homens, colegas de atividade ou profissão e vítimas de preconceito institucionalizado no ambiente de trabalho e no contexto social, que os incapacita de levar a relação adiante. A partir dos romances Bom Crioulo, de Adolfo Caminha, e Grande Sertão: Veredas, de João Guimarães Rosa, e dos contos “Aqueles Dois”, de Caio Fernando Abreu, e “Brokeback Mountain”, de Annie Proulx, o artigo traça peculiaridades similares nas relações descritas nessas narrativas e as analisa do ponto de vista da teoria queer e de propostas do filósofo Michel Foucault.

Annie Proulx

The philosophical underpinnings and existential implications of Annie Proulx’s fiction situate it in the tradition of literary naturalism. The writer portrays characters from the lower social classes, people who are unable to overcome the impasse in which they have found themselves. Far from idyllic sentiments, Proulx’s approach to the experience of place connects her to the writers associated with so-called new regionalism. She shows the degrading influence of the life amidst beautiful natural surroundings on individual human psyche. Proulx looks closely at the processes of the commodification of regional culture and interprets them as symptoms of a dangerous global tendency.

Annie Proulx—A Writer in Quest

This article reviews Annie Proulx’s life and her writing career and examines the quest motif throughout her writing, in order to shed light on Annie Proulx studies. It explores Proulx’s insight into the existential predicament of contemporary people living in a post-industrial society as traditional culture is getting lost and traditional ways of living are out of date. By setting her characters on the journey of quest in an attempt to discover who they really are, Proulx has invigorated the traditional quest motif.

Annie Proulx’s Imaginative Leap: Constructing Gay Masculinity in “Brokeback Mountain”

Non-heterosexual men have long existed on the social and cultural margins. Gay and bisexual male characters in literature, too, have done so for many generations. This essay explores the construction of gay masculinity in the short story “Brokeback Mountain” in relation to the “imaginative leap” that its author, Annie Proulx, undertook in order to conceptualize and represent this noteworthy form of marginalized otherness. It demonstrates that, despite the story’s various refreshing elements, “Brokeback Mountain” ultimately relies far too extensively on the logic of melodrama when telling the tale of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, who fall in love in 1963 and continue their sexual relationship over the course of two decades. As a result, this story ends up positioning its two queer protagonists as enemies of the patriarchal social order and the larger society within which it so comfortably exists, implicitly perpetuating both heterosexism and homophobia as it does its cultural work.