On lifecouse and self help: contrasts among Brasilian, North American and Portugues litarature

Author(s)

Talita Pereira de Castro

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2016-08-10

Examining board members

Guita Grin Debert; Heloisa Buarque de Almeida; Heloísa André Pontes; Carolina Branco de Castro Ferreira; Elisabeth Frolich Mercadante

• Advisor: Guita Grin Debert

Abstract

This thesis focuses on how books, classified by publishing under the self-help label, address issues related to the passage of time over the life of people, and the consequent personal crises of these processes contribute to the socio-cultural construction the contemporary adult life in our society and time. Through qualitative content analysis addressing publications from three specific national contexts - Brazil, United States of America and Portugal - this work deals with the gender and generational inflections, as analytical categories, that constitute those narratives. Topics such as the midlifecrisis, andquarterlifecrisis, amongothers, are addressed as narrative constructions, from which conceptions of masculinity, femininity, youth and maturity, own their contexts, are analyzed. The thesis also discusses the differences in the understanding of the own label self-help means in three different national publishing contexts (AU)