A sátira na cena teatral de Milson Henriques em Animais, não desanimais

Abstract

This paper aims to identify satire as a humorous device in the play Animais, não desanimais (1969), by Milson Henriques (1938-2016), a playwright, poet, and cartoonist. Produced during Brazil’s military dictatorship and subjected to official censorship, the play reveals itself as a socio-political allegory constructed through a fabulistic universe, by means of which a subtle critique is directed at the Brazilian government, hegemonic moral values, and, above all, the mechanisms that restricted individual and collective freedoms. To this end, bHenriques combines satire with linguistic and scenic resources – such as wordplay, irony, caricature, and the grotesque – in order to intensify the comic effect and transform the theatrical text into a form of symbolic resistance within a historical context marked by oppression and silencing. Grounded in qualitative research, the study is based on a critical reading of the play from a linguistic-literary perspective. The analysis draws on Vladimir Propp’s (1992) linguistic approach and on Northrop Frye’s (2014) contributions to satire and fictional modes, seeking to understand how the play’s formal and symbolic procedures operate in the construction of humor of a critical nature.