A mágica dos Wirre Gedanken: dialogismo e fantasia em três contos de Kingdoms of Elfin, de Sylvia Townsend Warner

Abstract

English writer Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) devoted the last years of her long life to fantasy writing. Unlike others of her works, the short stories written periodically for The New Yorker magazine and collected in Kingdoms of Elfin, in 1977, bring fairies and other magical creatures from invisible realms that maintain a certain degree of relationship with human beings. In addition, these stories are built with intertexts from several other older or contemporary works of hers, despite showing independent plots. However, if the reader tries to look for some connection between the various allusions and dialogues that appear in her short stories, he may come across the randomness, disorder, and confusion, known characteristics of many postmodern works, particularly from the 1960s and 1970s. Warner uses the expression wirre gedanken (troubled thoughts), on which the narrator of the short stories in Kingdoms of Elfin briefly comments, when referring to the name of one of the fairy kingdoms that are found there, highlighting, ironically, the confused, disordered, and subjective nature of these plots. In this sense, the general objective of this work is, besides increasing the visibility of the author in Brazilian academy, is to analyze the possible dialogical interrelationships existing in three short stories] from Kingdoms of Elfin (2018), which, among other themes, metaphorically deal with the marginalization of different people, poor or elderly, in the American society of 1970s: “The One and the Other” [1972], “The Five Black Swans” [1973] and “The Blameless Triangle” [1974]. We found out that, in particular and distinct ways, these tales allude to historical and fictional texts through parody. Thus, we study fantasy, the fantastic and the wonderful, especially from the writings of David Roas (2014), Tzvetan Todorov (2004) and Ana Luiza Silva Camarani (2014), scholars of these literary modalities, seeking to understand how the fantasy could metaphorically represent Western society. In addition, we consider it important to analyze texts by some postmodern theorists, such as Linda Hutcheon (1991, 2000) and Jean-François Lyotard (2009), as well as the writings by Mikhail Bakhtin (2015, 2017) and critics of intertextuality. We understand that, ultimately, by resorting to fantasy, Warner seeks to criticize society in the mid-twentieth century, with regard to social dehumanization, disrespect for nature and others, and the lack of hope in human beings.