Contradictions of the contemporary: memory, nacionality and universality in O sol se põe em São Paulo and Diário da queda

Author(s)

Gisele Novaes Frighetto

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2016-11-09

Examining board members

Andrea Saad Hossne; Jefferson Agostini Mello; Tânia Pellegrini; Karl Erik Schollhammer; Adriano Schwartz

• Advisor: Andrea Saad Hossne

Abstract

This dissertation aims to study the themes of memory, nationality and universality in two contemporary brazilian novels, O Sol se põe em São Paulo (2007), by Bernardo Carvalho, and Diário da queda (2011), by Michel Laub. These novels approach the memory of immigrants through the subjective narration of Brazilian descendants, what brings the discussion around transcultural narratives. The post-modernism is understood as a contradictory cultural tendency characterized by the presence of the past, made of the recovery of aesthetics and texts of literary tradition inside parodic narratives. The post-modern narrator enclosures the paradox of the necessity of narrative, even after the deterioration of experience in modernity. The remains of a formal or social realism contributes to the composition of narratives where conflicting tendencies defined in terms of affective realism and traumatic realism coexist, according to Schøllhammer (2012; 2013). Ambiance, themes and influences acknowledged in these two novels suggest a production oriented to a universalist approach, in contrast with the permanence of aspects of nationality, perceived through its material representation related to the brazilian underdevelopment. This particular context demands the conception of a post-modernism and a post-modernity that contemplates the peculiarities of Latin American societies, whose coexistence between backwardness and advancement may affect literary production as well as its legitimation inside a world literary system. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 13/05595-2 - Study of national-universal dialectics in four contemporary Brazilian novels
• Grantee: Gisele Novaes Frighetto
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate