Abstract

MARQUEZ ARREAZA, Dionisio. The Crisis of Constitutionalism in Literature: From Critical Fiction to Foundational Literature in Brazil and Venezuela. Lit. teor. hist. crit. [online]. 2015, vol.17, n.1, pp.141-170. ISSN 0123-5931.  https://doi.org/10.15446/lthc.v17n1.48692.

The collapse of the nationalist idealism of the fictional characters in Lima Barreto's Triste fim de Policarpo Quaresma, and Urbaneja Achelpohl's En este país...! articulates political emancipation, foundational literature, and national representation in Brazil and Venezuela. The characters are bearers of patriotic and reformist ideals aligned with the national rhetoric of foundational literature and its "ex-colonial" nature. However, this reveals an ambivalence between recognizing the inclusion of the marginalized subject and reproducing the same Western and colonizing perspective that had marginalized that subject during the Colonial period. In the context of the Republic, the characters reproduce this perspective through both the new liberal language of constitutionalism and the discourse on nature with its agricultural exploitation rationality. Thus, the drama of the fictional characters is interrelated with the promise of social emancipation of historically marginalized subjects.

Keywords : novel; constitutionalism; social exclusion; Brazil; Venezuela.

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