Laughter's empire: comic aspects in A Samba for Sherlock

Abstract

This paper offers an interpretation of Jo Soares’ A samba for Sherlock highlighting the construction of the comic from a series of strategies that ranges from the mobilization and revelation of stereotypes, social satire, and grotesque. Towards that concur theories about laughter and its relationship with social context developed by authors such as Propp, Bergson and Bakhtin. The aim is to demonstrate how in the Brazilian novel humor is related to the questioning and the maintenance of certain hierarchies by mocking characters, social groups, conventions, including, those of the crime genre and one of its prominent figures: Sherlock Holmes.