Criticism, memory and narrative

Author(s)

Rodrigo Cerqueira

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
• Defense date: 2013-03-18

Examining board members

Francisco Foot Hardman; Carlos Eduardo Ornelas Berriel; Jefferson Cano; Mirella Marcia Longo Vieira Lima; Luiz Dagobert de Aguirra Roncari

• Advisor: Francisco Foot Hardman

Abstract

In this PhD dissertation I try to explain an important formal change in Joaquim Manuel de Macedo's first novels, which were written between 1844 and 1855, before he abandoned the genre for almost a decade. What occurred was a progressive de-functionalization of "extravagance" - a very common expression in his books -, that was used to portray a youth inscribed in a new kind of sociability, more modern, which Brazil experienced after 1808 and mainly after 1822. As those narratives were composed according to a generational opposition - young characters behaving in accordance with a new set of rules, on one side; and the old ones a bit apprehensive about these changes, on the other -, that defunctionalization ended up stifling the real protagonism of the youth, a process of which Vicentina (1853) may be the best example. Following the steps of Franco Moretti, for whom literature is one of the ways we use to master and to understand historical changes, I read that process in the light of a conservative shift that occurred in that period: a moment which ascribed a major importance to a centralized authority. As a result, the Brazilian novel reached, around 1850's, a formal impasse: Macedo could not reduce even more the space assigned to the youth without modifying its literary function; in other words, without giving the protagonism of the narrative to the older characters, transforming the Brazilian novel into a depository of an openly anti-modern world view. This is not an attractive perspective to a nation recently emancipated and anxious to be a part of the "civilized" world (AU)