"A verdadeira ficção faz a obra de arte": a construção das personagens artistas em 'O susto', de Agustina Bessa-Luís

Abstract

In this Course Completion Work, we propose a reading of the novel O susto (1958), by Agustina Bessa-Luís, from the mobilization of aspects referring to the category of characters in order to understand the phenomenon of references of novelistic creatures to figures of Teixeira de Pascoaes and Fernando Pessoa. The main aim is to demonstrate in detail a narrative strategy of the author, in which external and latent traits and characteristics of the Portuguese canon are subtly introduced in the work in an allusion to two references of Portuguese poetry. This gives the novel some peculiarities with regard to the construction of characters characterized as artists. The Augustinian novel makes the textual limits of genre tenuous and intensifies the discussion about artistic creation itself, and its writing enables a metaliterary discussion about this process or even about the literature produced in Portugal in the 1950s. therefore, a reflection on the idea of ​​the artist characters present in the work and the understanding of the art generated through them.