Memory, Prophecy, and Psychography

Abstract Moacyr Scliar’s novel A mulher que escreveu a Bíblia (1999) depicts Old Testament writing from within the court of King Solomon and engages with Harold Bloom’s theory that a woman wrote parts of the Bible. The present article first demonstrates how syncretism in this novel facilitates forensic remembrance irrespective of religious categories. Next, it explores the novel’s employment of memory in mapping its characters’ transgressions and assigning guilt, with the act of writing functioning as both a transgressive and redemptive endeavor. The novel solidifies and subverts notions of Biblical male authorship while engaging psychographic writing as a nexus of memory and religious belief. Taking up the potentiality of remembrance as a retrospective and revisionist endeavor, this article unpacks the novel’s elliptical nature, both in the sense of gaps it leaves undeveloped, and in its ability to move back and forth through time and memory.