The waning of the "formation" idea in Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's Oeuvre (1936-1958)

• Grant number: 23/09050-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: February 01, 2024
• End date: March 11, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Literature Theory
• Principal Investigator: Alfredo Cesar Barbosa de Melo
• Grantee: Andre Jobim Martins
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The project seeks to investigate the overarching concept of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's historiographical and critical writings - that of formation - from 1936, when the author published Raízes do Brasil, through 1958, when he became chair of History of Brazilian Civilization at the University of São Paulo. Sérgio Buarque's understanding of the formation of Brazilian culture springs from his extensive study of Western literary and philosophical works, in particular from the Ibero-American world, and was decisively influenced by the German intellectual tradition when the author moved to Berlin in 1929-31. The first full-fledged display of Buarque's idea of formation is his debut book, Raízes do Brasil (1936). From that point up until becoming full professor at USP, Sergio Buarque developed his theory of Brazilian formation in several writings analyzing Brazilian and Luso-Brazilian intellectual artifacts, such as the second edition of Raízes do Brasil, the studies posthumously published in Capítulos de literatura colonial, written between the end of the 1940s and the middle of the following decade, the master's thesis Elementos formadores da Sociedade Portuguesa na Época dos descobrimentos (1958) and the dissertation Visão do paraíso, in addition to several shorter works of literary criticism written in the same period and published in newspapers in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. This project is grounded on the hypothesis that, from 1936 to 1958, the author undertakes a significant revision, or attenuation, of the guiding concept, and seeks to better specify the relationships between the author's intellectual trajectory and shifts in Brazilian culture in the period.

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

ANDRÉ JOBIM MARTINS. Liberdade, ordem, revolução Metamorfoses no léxico político brasileiro (1928-1936). Varia História, v. 41, 2025-03-24. (23/09050-2)