A TERRA PROMETIDA REPUBLICANA

UM ESTUDO DAS METÁFORAS RELIGIOSAS EM "ESAÚ E JACÓ", DE MACHADO DE ASSIS

Abstract

This article examines the construction of religious metaphors on the novel Esaú and Jacó, by Machado de Assis, produced in 1904, during Brazil’s First Republic, in which such imagery is employed to articulate politics, social customs, and faith, thereby exposing the tensions and contradictions of the period. The study observes the metaphorical strategy through which Machado uses religious references to comment on, ironize, and problematize the conduct of public figures and Brazilian society in a historical context marked by political instability and the symbolic reorganization of republican values. Similarities are identified in the author’s use of religious imagery to expose, in an ironic, didactic, and, given the authoritarian context, implicit manner, the political and moral idiosyncrasies of the transitional period between the republican and democratic regimes in Brazil. In this regard, the article highlights Machado’s engagement with contemporary historical events and, more specifically, with the concepts that shaped the religious imagination of the time. The theoretical framework is primarily based on Schwarz (1991), with additional support from Guimarães (2012), which addresses the specificities of the Machadian novel from literary, historical, and sociological perspectives.