Building rural masculinities in The Devil to Pay in the Backlands

This theoretical-reflective study aims to investigate the construction of versions of masculinity from a reading of the novel Grande sertão: veredas, by Guimarães Rosa. For that, we resort to the concepts of hegemonic masculinity, proposed by Connell, and performativity, elaborated by Butler. The research covers three ordering axes: 1) a brief exposition on the approaches to masculinities, rescuing their genesis in the feminist theories that inaugurated gender studies; 2) the processes of genderfication in the perspective of the construction of rural masculinity; 3) the presentation of a reading of the relationship between Riobaldo and Diadorim. We emphasize that gender does not subsume a substance, although it reproduces substantial effects, perceived in different versions of hegemonic masculinity performed by the gang of jagunços personified in the Rosian epic.

Keywords:
Masculinity; Gender; Literature; Homosexuality