Exile, violence and subversion: a discussion about time and everyday life in Ovelhas Negras (1995) by Caio Fernando Abreu

• Grant number: 24/16908-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: August 01, 2025
• End date: October 31, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology
• Principal Investigator: Mauro Luiz Rovai
• Grantee: Giulia Gabriela Brolo Soranz
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research intends to discuss the themes of time and everyday life, choosing as privileged material for analysis the book of short stories Ovelhas Negras (1995), by the writer Caio Fernando Abreu (1948-1996). The idea is to discuss how this work as a whole, when addressing or expressing social changes - Ovelhas Negras is made up of short stories that go through a period of great transformations: from the Civil-Military Coup of 1964 to the first elections of the country's redemocratization at the end of the 20th century -, they resize the configurations of time and daily life, normally associated with the intimate and private sphere. In methodological terms, our guide will be Raymond Williams' (1979) analysis proposal, with an emphasis on the concept of "structures of feeling", which will allow us to take a vertical dive into the analysis of the content of the work. Having the perspective that the arts, especially literature, is an interlocutor of social issues, our proposal aims at a dialogue between sociology and literature, so that the analysis of the stories tells us about society, takes us to society, and not that serve as an illustration of events in the country's recent history.