O autor, a obra, o tempo: uma leitura do romance Galvez Imperador do Acre (1976), de Márcio Souza

Abstract

This dissertation proposes to analyze the first novel by Amazonian author Márcio Souza (1946–2024), Galvez Imperador do Acre (1976): based on the relationship between history and fiction, we consider the novel a cultural artifact that articulates historical representation and discursive construction, mediated by fictional narratives. Situated within the New Cultural History (NHC), this research is based on the premise that literary narrative constitutes a form of meaning-making regarding the past, allowing the reader to access imaginaries, symbolic disputes, and the conditions of production of the time. The central objective is to understand how the novel reframes the historical episode of the “Causa Acreana,” mobilizing narrative strategies that tension the boundaries between historical fact and fiction, producing a critique of canonical representations of the Amazon. Methodologically, the analysis articulates references from historiography, literary criticism, and, especially, Ricoeurian hermeneutics, structured around the three mimesis: prefiguration (conditions of production), configuration (authorship and narrative construction), and refiguration (effects of meaning in reading). We defend that Márcio Souza‟s novel, by using irony and parody, not only reinterprets the past but, above all, critically interferes in the literary and historiographical fields, proposing new ways of narrating the history of the Amazon. The novel is thus interpreted here as part of a process of rupture with traditional models of representation, expanding the possibilities for reading and understanding the practical past.