Crazy Landscapes and the Work of the Alienist

the Gaze and Literogeography

Abstract

This text is the result of a literary-geographical study of the short story “The Alienist”, by Machado de Assis. Through a geographical reading of the work, we sought to characterize the relationship between work and mental illness in the Alienist’s performance by reading the landscape. Itaguaí and its landscapes are represented around Dr. Bacamarte and the creation of Casa Verde, an institution for the treatment of mentally ill people. This study aimed to analyze the landscape representations of Itaguaí as a look at spatiality, its dynamics and relationship with the Alienist’s illness and work. Therefore, the analysis based on the landscape was carried out through the description of the geographic elements of the village (Gonçalves, 2021), in the construction of the narrative places (Silva, 2024) of Itaguaí. The relationships between the characters and their spatiality (dynamics or spatial configuration) were studied, highlighting the look at mental illness, especially that of the Alienist. This sought to capture the protagonist’s perspective on the landscapes (forms, contents and actions) in order to characterize the “insanities”. Dr. Bacamarte’s investigations led him to develop theories about mental health, under which he tried to fit everyone, ending up fitting himself. This framework helped us to reflect on the use of the description of landscapes in the construction of the spatiality of the narrative in the literary-geographical interpretation. In this way, we sought to read possible geographies in the work, through an approximation between geography and literature for the reading of the world..