@article {Beaudry64, author = {Derek Beaudry}, title = {Limit and Transgression in Hilda Hilst{\textquoteright}s Pornographic Trilogy}, volume = {56}, number = {2}, pages = {64--83}, year = {2019}, doi = {10.3368/lbr.56.2.64}, publisher = {University of Wisconsin Press}, abstract = {Hilda Hilst{\textquoteright}s Pornographic or Obscene Trilogy, composed of the novels O caderno rosa de Lori Lamby (1990), Contos d{\textquoteright}esc{\'a}rnio/textos grotescos (1990), and Cartas de um sedutor (1991), were deemed by many to be a scandalous offense for their explicit (and comic) representations of sexuality, particularly for their treatment of sexual taboos. Hilst regarded the novels as part of a larger effort to gain more attention after years of relative obscurity. In this essay, I argue that the trilogy signifies an important change in the philosophical concerns that characterize her poetry, theatre, and fiction. If in other works by Hilst, one finds a certainty in the ability of thought and language to represent the real, whose condition of possibility assumes the presence of a divine figure, the Pornographic Trilogy marks the absence or death of God. As a result, the novels trouble notions of a centered individual and collective subject. This shift in the ontological assumptions that underlie Hilst{\textquoteright}s work is evoked in varying figures of limit and transgression that inform the novels{\textquoteright} enumeration of sexual taboos, as well as a recurrent tension between three images of writing. I show that the novels consider the death of God as it relates to writing, particularly as it concerns narrative voice, authorship, and genre. Finally, I contend that it is through the decidedly comic mode of the trilogy that the novels signal the attempt to think of self as singular being and community as a sharing of the condition of human finitude.}, issn = {0024-7413}, URL = {https://lbr.uwpress.org/content/56/2/64}, eprint = {https://lbr.uwpress.org/content/56/2/64.full.pdf}, journal = {Luso-Brazilian Review} }