Martyrdom, Rite and Fetish in Body Art and The Meal, by Newton Moreno

Abstract

For Reception Aesthetics theorist Hans Robert Jauss, the writer is first and foremost a reader, situated in a chain of receptions. Considering the experience of reading as an activity capable of generating a creative response, Jauss understands the literary tradition as a process of continuous exchange between the old and the new, in which the present may reread the past, attributing new meanings to it. From this point of view, we approach the process of literary reception that, in Brazil, is established as an interpretative tradition around the theme of anthropophagy, constantly revisited to assume different meanings in diverse historical moments. In this tradition, we locate the production of Newton Moreno, a playwright from Pernambuco, who with Body Art and Meal: essays on cannibalism, stages the body as an expressive prop of rites in which the tribal practices of anthropophagy resonate. On the one hand, we will try to demonstrate the points of contact of this dramaturgy with the national literary past and, on the other, the ruptures brought about by a rereading that integrates the theme of cannibalism with the idea of the body in sacrifice in Body Art and Artaud’s theater of cruelty.