Iracema: 1865-2015: dialog and permanence

• Grant number: 13/14645-3
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): October 01, 2013
• Effective date (End): September 30, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Brazilian Literature
• Principal researcher: Therezinha Apparecida Porto Ancona Lopez
• Grantee: José Quintão de Oliveira
• Home Institution: Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros (IEB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Supported by extensive research on the book circulation and criticism within the Country and abroad, it wants a critical, analytical study on José de Alencar's novel Iracema: a legend of Ceará. This work, which definitively made famous its author and became one of the Portuguese language most edited books, got established and spread throughout the Literature, originating poems, satires, abridgements, and generated extensive criticism. So it broke through those boundaries, turned into a wider cultural subject and consolidated the image of a character which became symbol and legend. Consequently Iracema became a true protagonist of nacional life and culture, source of one of the greatest intersemiosis in Brazilian literature. The heroine has spread to the onomastics and religion, movies and theatre, popular poetry, visual arts, comics, video games, music, popular imagery etc.. In this course the literary creation became probably the one best known and recognized by the Brazilians, and holder of the richest and most complex image in Nacional literature. It aims to understand how this character got settled in the literature by analyzing its circulation beyond book boundaries. It conceives the study as a dialog which involves the peculiarities of the novel circulation and reception, and seeks the answers offered by the book to the questions stated by contemporary and literary traditions. In short, it wants to contribute to the understanding of the specific ways with which the work survives, faces the posterity, opens new dialogs and ensures reproduction and permanence.