Mário de Andrade: Macunaíma, a Hero Without a Character. A Parody in Search of Cultural Descolonization

Abstract

The figure of Macunaíma in the avant-garde novel by Mário de Andrade is interpreted as a double critique: a critique of the 'western' individual and of an attitude that seeks to base its identity on mythical legends. The literary register of this critique is parody and the position from whence it is expressed is the 'in-between' of the postcolonial subject. In his subversion ofthe modern hero (who is represented in exemplary fashion in the Bildungsroman), Macunaíma recurs to the tradition of the picaresque novel. Nevertheless, it is clear that the figure of the pícaro, even in his transformation to the Brazilian malandro, does not assume the position of the place 'in-between' that the narrator claims for himself.