2024-07-082024-07-082024-07-082024-06-04https://repositorio.ifal.edu.br/handle/123456789/538Older than the term utopia itself, inaugurated by Thomas More in his Utopia (1516), the idealization of alternative spaces has always been present in cultures, as a way of projecting into the plane of the dream what is lacking in the world. Thus, imagination emerges as a powerful weapon against the shadows of the present – and nothing is more conducive to the creation of utopian images than the terrain of literature. In "The Former Magician of the Minho Tavern" (1947), a short story by Murilo Rubião, the imaginative capacity appears as a negative aspect, which makes the protagonist desire both death and his own insertion in a bureaucratic environment, such as incarceration, a process capable of depriving him of magical abilities. While the people around the character see magic as something funny and positive, the character herself is completely dissatisfied and unhappy. Her utopian desire is, therefore, the destruction of that magical world, permeated by the supernatural. However, when the character manages to get rid of the magical abilities, she is even more dissatisfied with her condition and begins to fantasize about the abilities she possessed, as an escape from her reality. The narratives of the fantastic genre, by offering a palpable everyday world that is only slightly transgressed by the supernatural, as theorized by David Roas (2014), question the absurdity of the human condition. Murilo Rubião's short story seems to deconstruct all the possibilities of hope and utopia within a world encompassed by uncertainties, in order to finally question the way in which the absence of utopian projects leads us to hopelessness and fatigue. Thus, with the present work, we intend to demonstrate that, by staging this dissatisfaction with the world, be it magical or bureaucratic, Rubião's narrative reaffirms the need for a utopian project.Acesso AbertoLetras - PortuguêsGênero fantásticoLiteratura fantásticaLiteratura – UtopiaFantastic literatureLiterature – UtopiaMurilo RubiãoTrabalho de Conclusão de CursoCNPQ::LINGUISTICA, LETRAS E ARTES::LETRAS