O bestiário fantástico de Murilo Rubião

Abstract

The theme of this work is justified by the need of searching more about what has been done in Brazil in the field of fantastic literature. Therefore and considering the importance of Murilo Rubião, a writer from Minas Gerais, considered as the pioneer of the Brazilian fantastic short stories, it was elected as purpose of this paper searching about his bestiary in four of his short stories: “O ex-mágico da taberna Minhota”, “Os dragões”, “Teleco, o coelhinho” and “Alfredo”. This paper aims to analyze the presence of animals and find out the reason why metamorphoses occur in some of these short stories. Trying to understand a little more about the theme in focus it was done a brief survey of bestiary in the Bible and the ones of classical, medieval and contemporary writers. The tradition of bestiaries originates in the Classical Antiquity with the Physiologus which had descriptions of animals, plants, stones and imaginary beings. In the Middle Age the bestiaries were written by the monks and rewritten every time new kinds of animals, plants and mineral elements were being discovered. Some today authors also created their collections of animals inspired in medieval bestiaries. However, Murilo Rubião’s production in fantastic genre stands out for the way he creates his stories mixing real with imaginary. KEYWORDS: Murilo Rubião; fantastic literature; bestiaries.