GOTTFRIED WOLFGANG (1843), DE PÉTRUS BOREL: A RETOMADA DE WASHINGTON IRVING COMO INVESTIMENTO NO GÊNERO FANTÁSTICO

Abstract

The French writer Petrus Borel (1809-1859) belongs to the group of artists victimized by ostracism, group that, according to the categories of literary history, is called “the little romantics”. Borel is among the members of Small Cenacle (1830-1833), artistic fraternity of which are also members Théophile Gautier and Gérard de Nerval, being the leader of this group composed by eccentric and riotous romantic young men. For the composition of his major works, the volume of immoral stories Champavert (1833) and the novel Madame Putiphar (1839), Petrus Borel is ranked as one of the main representatives of paroxysmal and subversive aspects of the French Romantic Movement, known as Frenetic Romanticism. However, his affiliation with the fantastic genre is not completely accepted. After an initial investment on this genre, with the release of the tale Les pressentiments (1833), ignored by critics, Borel reaffirms his membership to the Fantastic, ten years later, giving the public Gottfried Wolfgang (1843), narrative released in the journal La Sylphide. To compose Gottfried Wolfgang, Borel resumed and translated the narrative of the American writer Washington Irving, entitled The adventure of the German student (1824), changing it in an ironic way. Thus, Irving’s tale is the narrative model that guides the composition of the enunciative " scenography " (Maingueneau, 2006) of Borel’s narrative. This paper aims, then, to analyze the strategies of subversion and ironic mirroring, concerning Irving’s tale, undertaken by Borel to legitimize the composition of the fantastic " scenography " of Gottfried Wolfgang.