Defeated modernization or resistance towards colonialism? Postcolonial analysis of Calunga by Jorge de Lima and Maleita by Lucio Cardoso

• Grant number: 21/03384-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2021
• End date: June 30, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Literature Theory
• Principal Investigator: Alfredo Cesar Barbosa de Melo
• Grantee: Lais Tardio Depintor
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project, we intend to show, through the analyses of two 1930s novels (Calunga by Jorge de Lima and Maleita by Lucio Cardoso) that the social critique commonly ascribed to the 1930 social novel needs to be more fully and detailed reassessed, once such critique does not solely present a full-blown denounce of the archaic social structures kept by local elites, but it also contains an attack on the alleged cultural backwardness that supposedly needs to be rescued and civilized. This modernizing effort embedded into the 1930s novel´s social critique will be studied through the lens of postcolonial studies. (AU)