The basis of Le Dernier des Justes: the reception and the context in the period of the publication

• Grant number: 12/05803-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: July 10, 2012
• End date: January 09, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Literature Theory
• Principal Investigator: Márcio Orlando Seligmann-Silva
• Grantee: Antônio Deval Neto
• Supervisor: Annette Wieviorka
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Identités, Relations Internationales et Civilisations de l’Europe (IRICE), France
• Associated to the scholarship: 11/02481-0 - Memory of violence in Andre Schwarz-Bart's Le Dernier des Justes, BP.MS

Abstract

This work intends to study the reception of the novel Le Dernier des Justes (1959), written by André Scharz-Bart. It also aims to research the sources that the author used to construct the novel, the searching documents and the works stored in collections of libraries and other French institutions, such as the Sainte-Geneviève Library, the Nacional Library and the press files of the Éditions Du Seuil, in Paris. The study of the reception of this work is vital to understand the importance that this romance has to the literature of the Shoa. We can notice this affirmation when we review the polemics and discussions that this publication had caused in France about jewish identity, the origin of the anti-semitism, both the Christian and the Nazi, and also about the responsability of France on the deportation and extermination of the European jews. The research of the sources studied by Schwarz-Bart for the creative process of this romance will also help us to understand the discursive strategies that were used in the analyzed narrative. We can also understand the relations established between the novel and the Oficial History which the author use as a counterpoint, he stays beside the ones that don´t tell the History and gives voice to them. These kinds of documents can be books and documents not published some of them digitized, that is not in circulation or are out-of-print for decades. The research need to be done on the spot, considering the conditions of these collections, that don´t allow another kind of research. (AU)