Bocatorta, a Brazilian Ghoul: Adaptations and Influence of Anglo Arabic Folklore in Monteiro Lobato

Abstract

One case of Gothic adaptation of pre-Islamic folklore resides in the figure of the ghoul. This Mesopotamian mythical creature was reinvented by Antoine Galland in the European context around 1718, when he translate and rewrote the collection of Hindi-Persian-Arabic narratives known as the One Thousand and One Nights. This article analyses the influence of this European ghoul on the creation of Bocatorta, protagonist of an eponymous short story published by Monteiro Lobato – an important Brazilian writer – in his Urupês (1918). I examine the influence of Galland’s work on Lobato’s work, alongside that of Caliban from Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611), one of Lobato’s main inspirations for the character of Bocatorta.