The Minotaur:absences and replacements in Monteiro Lobato’s work

Abstract

In 1939, Monteiro Lobato published O Minotauro (The Minotaur), an interpretation of the Greek myth featuring a creature that had the head of a bull and the body of a human being that was killed by the Athenian hero Theseus. Lobato’s monster is alone in his labyrinth to where he takes he cook,Tia Nastacia, whom he  kidnapped. His home at the Island of Crete neither holds young Athenians to be devoured nor displays the typical violence of the classical tales. Ariadne’s ball of thread is replaced by Emilia’s bobbins. Instead of being killed by Theseus, the Minotaur is defeated by Tia Nastacia’s fried dumplings. Those suppressing and adding operations are the conducting line of our essay about the connection between Lobato’s version and the Minotaur’s source text, whose actual origin has been lost in time. We are able to argue that Lobato’s choices depend on his own beliefs about the writing process, on the need for the adaptation of the material to his targeted readers enhancing, on the one hand, the importance of intelligence which prevails over violence. In order to support our analysis, we have taken into consideration not only Lobato’s texts, but also contemporary authors,  such Martins, Hutcheon, Arrojo, Samoyault and Sant’Anna, who deal with the adaptation process and the inter-textual mechanisms involved  in it.