The epic in Invenção do Mar, by Gerardo Mello Mourão, and Galáxias, by Haroldo de Campos

Author(s)

Gustavo Scudeller

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
• Defense date: 2014-07-08

Examining board members

Marcos Antonio Siscar; Mario Luiz Frungillo; Denilson Soares Cordeiro; Moacir Aparecido Amâncio

• Advisor: Antonio Alcir Bernárdez Pécora

Abstract

Twentieth century literary theory and criticism usually define the epic as an archaic poetic genre that is virtually extinct in modernity. However, they frequently employ concepts like epic and epic poetry to explain how some of the major works of this period use traditional topics of that genre as their central compositional element. Ezra Pound¿s The Cantos (1930-1969), Fernando Pessoa¿s Mensagem (1935), and Jorge de Lima¿s Invenção de Orfeu (1950) are paradigmatic cases which draw on epic topics like the conception of the poem as an encyclopedic summary of experiences, the preference for the long poetic line, and the employment of mythological motifs in the creation of their heroes. Hence, criticism and theory, though fortuitous and unintentionally, testify to the survival of the epic genre in this period. Bearing these observations in mind, this study investigates the different uses of the epic in the composition of Invenção do Mar (1997), by Gerardo Mello Mourão (1917-2007), a poet from Ceará, and Galáxias (1984), by Haroldo de Campos (1929-2003), a poet from São Paulo. These books are considerably important to understand the growing interest in this genre in the Brazilian poetry of the second half of the twentieth century. Our thesis is that these poems seek elements in the tradition of the epic to handle the new challenges faced by modern poetry as the expansion of mass culture and consumption eventually voids the prospects of social transformation that inspired the utopias of the vanguard and the nationalist projects in the first half of the century, to which the poems remain bound. Under these new circumstances, epic poetry forgoes the triumphalism of its traditional expressions and incorporates the prospect of failure as its central compositional element, thus questioning precisely what it means to make poetry in modernity (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 09/17873-1 - The epic in brazilian poetry of the second half of the 20th century
• Grantee: Gustavo Scudeller
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate