OEDIPUS IN BACKCOUNTRY SERTÃO

TRAGEDY AND SOCIAL ISSUES IN GIANFRANCESCO GUARNIERI’S AND FERNANDO PEIXOTO’S ADAPTATION

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze an adaptation of the myth of Oedipus in a screenplay called Édipo written for television in 1975 by Gianfrancesco Guarnieri (1936–2006) and Fernando Peixoto (1937–2012). This transposition of a known Greek myth to the hinterland sub-region of Northeast Brazil called sertão enabled the authors to critically address local cultural elements and social issues. This analysis shows how politically engaged authors managed to reconfigure Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus in order to present prominent Brazilian social issues in the 1970s, such as drought, coronelism and land reform, turning Greek tragedy’s Oedipus into a prosperous landowner in the sertão. The Brazilian Oedipus developed in this adaptation works as a canvas for social problems and archaic politics. The paper is comprised of two parts: a review of theoretical concepts of reception involved in Classical Studies and an analysis of Guarnieri’s and Peixoto’s adaptation in relation to Sophocles’s tragedy.