Os Jogos da Natureza, de Mário Novello (original) (raw)

Traditionally, in fantasy, the wizard figure is related to the elderly sage who directs the hero towards adventure. His role, from medieval Merlin to important contemporary rereadings, such as Gandalf the Grey, in The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien, or Albus Dumbledore, in Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling, may present a few ambivalent traces, but he is, in general, the authority figure who has the necessary knowledge to the hero’s journey, whose major interest is usually the community and the common good. Nevertheless, the wizard also exists as an anti-hero figure, according to a much more recent tradition, typical in the contemporary literature of fantasy. In this paper, I analyse Tiago Boanerges, an exorcist wizard, in Exorcismos, Amores e Uma Dose de Blues (2014), by Eric Novello (1978), in comparison to wizards from both traditions. Novello’s lead character displays some particularities along the narrative, presenting only a distant relation to the great wizards of Western literature, while identifying with his peers from contemporary anglophone works, like Hellblazer’s John Constantine, and Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden, in The Dresden Files book series.