Genological-literary reflections of a “short story”: “Os Paradoxos do Bem”, by José Régio

Abstract

José Régio, rooted in his vocation of sincerity, never hid his aversion to the boundaries between genders, which he considered to be less rigorous and definable. In fact, according to this author, they served only to counteract the genuineness and independence of literary creation. Witness of this challenge thus constitutes all the regiano work imbued with the values of defiance and rebellion before the literary canons. In fact, when particularly looking at “The Paradoxes of Good” by José Régio, we find that there is an unequivocally clear transgression of the strict treatment of certain elements that short story genre presupposes. Indeed, this short narrative, in addition to not observing in its fullness the criterion of brevity, precludes the respective treatment of the categories of the narrative itself, thus approaching the literary-genre outline of the novella and even denoting, even if subtly, characteristic features of the novel. Thus, for an analysis of the boundaries of the canon in this particular short narrative, we shall first make a succinct presentation of the foundations of the short story and of the novel as literary genres, in order to ascertain the treatment of some traits and respective elements in the narrative under study, and so try to circumscribe it in the relevant genologic constitution.