Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

«¿No se puede volver a vivir el pasado? Pues, quizás no…» Espejismo de la peregrinación en las novelas cortas del Sur de Francis Scott Fitzgerald

2017; UMR ESPACE et UMR LISST; Issue: 24 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4000/framespa.4386

1760-4761

Pascal Bardet,

American Literature and Culture

Scott Fitzgerald is not a Southern writer, but this US region holds a significant place in his fiction. Indeed, more than being a mere backdrop in his novels, the South appears as a central setting in some of Fitzgerald's shorter fiction. The fictional town of Tarleton is found in four short-stories: «The Ice Palace», «The Jelly-Bean», «Dice, Brass Knuckles and Guitar» and «The Last of the Belles». In each story, the American South is never analyzed or described per se but always in comparison to northern places that put each character to the test and make them long for the land of their lost youth and innocence. The South, the archetypal land of pastoral traditions and romantic elation, becomes nothing more than a lost paradise where the past cannot repeat itself and where the trip down memory lane is ineluctably doomed.