A LINHA SERPENTINA DA BELEZA E A IMAGEM DE NARCISO EM THE LINE OF BEAUTY, DE ALAN HOLLINGHURST

Abstract

In this essay, I aim to discuss the “ogee”, or the “line of beauty”, which gives title to the novel The Line of Beauty (2004), by Alan Hollinghurst. On the one hand, this essay is based on the premise that the “line of beauty” represents a kind of structuring principle of the novel. On the other hand, criticism concerning Hollinghurst’s novel tends to fall into schematic readings, through associative keys of meaning, mainly related to the work of Henry James. Therefore, I deliberately try to avoid such critical considerations that produce a schematic reading key, in order to evade reducing the novel to a series of formal variations of straight and curved lines, and so on. My intent is to build a coherent critical argument based on the novel’s own suggestions about the line of beauty, which values sinuous argumentative lines, full of twists, comings and goings, instead of closed conclusions. In this critical argument, I also focus on the figure of Narcissus and on the manner it acts upon the conceptions, or on the relationships, of beauty that the novel weaves towards Nick.