The death of the old witch: the representation of space in an indigenous myth from the Munduruku ethnicity

Abstract

Based on the concept of topoanalysis by Borges Filho (2008) and Borges Filho and Silva Junior (2012), the aim of this article is to identify and analyze the representations of space in the indigenous Munduruku myth “The death of the old witch”, by the indigenous author Daniel Munduruku (2001), narrative that integrates the work The serpents that stole the night and other myths. Therefore, we will reflect on how the macro and microspaces in the book represent the characters’ experiences, as well as how such characters interact with the spaces that are predominant in the text: the forest, the witches’ hut, and the indigenous village. To proceed in such study, we recur to the research conducted by Almeida and Queiroz (2004), Thiél (2012) and Graúna (2013), in order to approach the particularities of the indigenous literature, and Lévi-Strauss (1978) on mythology.