A idéia de terrorismo na literatura: o agente secreto de Joseph Conrad

• Ano de defesa: 2008
• Autor(a) principal: Ribeiro, Daniel Mendelski
• Orientador(a): Zilles, Urbano
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul; Porto Alegre
• Palavras-chave em Português: LITERATURA INGLESA; CONRAD, JOSEPH - CRÍTICA E INTERPRETAÇÃO; LITERATURA INGLESA - HISTÓRIA E CRÍTICA; TEORIA LITERÁRIA; LITERATURA - SOCIOLOGIA
• Link de acesso: http://hdl.handle.net/10923/4145

Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent was first published in 1907 and has been read and debated – especially by scholars – since then due to its unique literary techniques and approach on the subject of espionage, politics and domestic drama. In the 9/11 aftermath, however, The Secret Agent was rediscovered as a "prophetic text", since its plot contains disturbingly familiar elements to us. To enlist some: a group of men who hate the modern capitalist society and wishes to destroy it; a conspiracy targeting a main symbol of such society; an outrage made with "destructive ferocity so absurd as to be incomprehensible"; a terrorist who walks by the streets seeking for an opportunity to blow himself and anyone around. Such elements, despite of their temporal distance of a hundred years from the release of Conrad's book, send us in a questioning not only about the usual literary subjects – plot, narrator, style – but also in a sociological and historical perspective between ours and Conrad’s turn-of-the-century perceptions. In order to analyze the novel in such perspectives, a multidisciplinary approach was used. It led us to conclude that "The Secret Agent" describes extremely human and universal feelings and behaviors that surpass any ordinary historical or sociological categorizations, reaching a deep and dreadful truth about timeless human nature.