Description
- Abstract:
- Within the sizeable corpus of contemporary historical fiction, one can identify a significant group of novels that re-imagine colonial Brazil as what French historian Pierre Nora has called a "place of memory". I propose to label them "Brazilian novels of colonial revisitation". After characterizing this subcategory of the contemporary historical novel, this essay focuses on ‘Breviário das Terras do Brasil’ by Luiz António de Assis Brasil, which reconstructs, from a postmodern perspective, a society operating under the specter of the Inquisition. Ultimately, however, Assis Brasil's novel aims to rearticulate our colonial past with the challenges faced by contemporary Brazil in an attempt to come to terms with the roots of the heterogeneity and "difference" that the author envisages as the foundation of Brazilianness.
- Dentro do corpus considerável da ficção histórica contemporânea, pode-se identificar um grupo significativo de romances que repensam o Brasil colonial como o que o historiador francês Pierre Nora chamou de "lugar da memória". Proponho rotulá-los de "romances brasileiros de revisitação colonial". Depois de caracterizar esta subcategoria do romance histórico contemporâneo, este ensaio enfoca o 'Breviário das Terras do Brasil', de Luiz Antônio de Assis Brasil, que reconstrói, a partir de uma perspectiva pós-moderna, uma sociedade que opera sob o espectro da Inquisição. Em última análise, no entanto, o romance de Assis Brasil pretende rearticular o nosso passado colonial com os desafios enfrentados pelo Brasil contemporâneo, em uma tentativa de chegar a um acordo com as raízes da heterogeneidade e "diferença" que o autor considera como o fundamento da brasilidade.
Citation
Valente, Luiz Fernando,
"The Brazilian novel of colonial revisitation: the case of 'Breviário das terras do Brasil'"
(2008).
BRASIL/BRAZIL: A Journal of Brazilian Literature.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/k4k0-0p33
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BRASIL/BRAZIL: A Journal of Brazilian Literature
...BRASIL/BRAZIL: A Journal of Brazilian Literature (ISSN: 2526-4885), founded in 1988, publishes scholarly articles on Brazilian literature and in Comparative Literature with a focus on Brazilian literature, as well as book reviews, interviews with writers, English-language translations of Brazilian literature …