THE JEW REVISITED: ANTÔNIO JOSÉ DA SILVA'S LIFE AND WORK IN THE NOVEL FICTION AND THEATRE OF HIS SUCCESSORS

• Grant number: 09/03010-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2009
• End date: December 31, 2010
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Other Vernacular Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Renata Soares Junqueira
• Grantee: Eduardo Neves da Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project intends to introduce the researcher to the critical reading of literature, especially of some authors (two Portuguese and a Brazilian one) who, in the 19th and 20th centuries, transposed to the novel and to drama several elements of the biography and the dramatic work of the Portuguese Brazilian writer of comedies Antônio José da Silva, the Jew (1705-1739). The primary corpus of the research is constituted by Camilo Castelo Branco's novel O JUDEU (1866), and by two plays, Gonçalves de Magalhães's ANTÔNIO JOSÉ OU O POETA E A INQUISIÇÃO (1838) and Bernardo Santareno's O JUDEU (1966). The aim is to evaluate, through the literary analysis of the novel and the plays, the modus operandi of each writer in the selection and manipulation of the many elements which constitute the Jew's biography and work, and to see in what extent they incorporate these elements to (re)compose the figure of Antônio José in literature. The hypothesis which guides the investigation is that the prevalent tendency of portraying the writer of comedies Antônio José da Silva especially as a martyr of the Portuguese Inquisition has diverted for a long period of time critical attention to his biographical elements and to his religious practice, causing both theatre critics and those involved in the theatre circles to delay discovering how original and plentiful Antônio José's setting and literary resources are in his parodies of baroque operas.