The Legacy of Mayombe in A Pendular Movement Between the Ethical and the Aesthetic

Abstract

This article discusses the presence of witness traces in the novel Mayombe, by the Angolan author Pepetela. The problematization of the question is because of the pendular moviment between ethic and aesthetic, in which the colonial experience is put in an artistically very well-crafted literary form. It is sought to get the narrative closer to the testimony gender and to take proof of how powerful is the message of resistence and humanity through solid examples from the book and theoretical-critical material. Besides to check that the aestheticization of a historical event did not decrease the artistical value of literary book nor it weakened the importance of the historical reporting.