From the slave ship to the contemporary novel: a reading of "um defeito de cor", by Ana Maria Gonçalves, as a challenge to Brazilian literary criticism

• Grant number: 14/20752-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: January 01, 2015
• End date: December 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Literature Theory
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Marcos Piason Natali
• Grantee: Fabiana Carneiro da Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The project aims to carry out a critical analysis of the novel "Um defeito de cor", published in 2006 by Ana Maria Gonçalves. The novel is assumed to be relevant to Brazilian society and literature due to a first-person perspective, unprecedented within our literary tradition, which recreates the life trajectory of a freed slave woman in the 19th century. Based on criterion that were delimited by critics as parameters for the evaluation of the novel genre, we will attempt to identify the extent to which certain constitutive "formal irresolutions" are related to the socio-historical context in which the literary work is produced, the 21st century, and simultaneously propose questions regarding the parameters of aesthetic valuation. With this purpose, we will analyze how, in spite of the aesthetic procedure - and its corresponding resources - that mark the book with a constitutive negativity, such as the variation in aesthetic distance and the questioning of referentiality, the author circumscribes such elements to a narrative strategy based on the affirmation of Africans and Afro-descendants, especially of the black woman. Moreover, we will attempt to tie the appearance of the book to Brazilian literary tradition, reflecting upon the possibility that it may be read as an isolated event, a moment of rupture or a continuity of this tradition. With this gesture, we intend to formulate some hypotheses regarding the condition of contemporary literary criticism in Brazil. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

SILVA, Fabiana Carneiro da. Black maternity in Um defeito de cor: history, body and nationalism as literary issues. 2017. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.