Abstract

SIEGA, Paula Regina. Colonial Literature as a Space of Disjunction: Brazilian Literary Historiography in the Latin American Context. Lit. teor. hist. crit. [online]. 2019, vol.21, n.2, pp.201-227. ISSN 0123-5931.  https://doi.org/10.15446/lthc.v21n2.78664.

Drawing on the ideas of Walter Mignolo, Thomas Pollock, Philippe Caron, and Juan Hansen, we examine the semantic transformations that gradually brought the term "literature" close to the notion of literary art. Observing the predominance of nationalist-aesthetic criteria in Brazilian literary historiography, we highlight the resistance to Candido's historiographical approach on the part of Hansen, Haroldo de Campos, and Teixeira Gomes, taking into account Jauss' reflections on literary histories that pursue the Romantic objective of national fulfilment. On the basis of Eni Orlandi's considerations on the official prevalence of Portuguese and Spanish in the former colonies, we reflect on her proposal regarding colonial language as a disjunction between an actual difference and a homogenizing imaginary. We then transfer that proposal to the field of literature in order to establish points of contact among the ideas of dichotomy of the colonial world (Fanon), the heterogeneity and fragmentation inherent to that world (Cornejo), and the semantic compensation that, in colonial discourse, leads the difference to the recognizable (Hansen).

Keywords : nationalism; aestheticism; heterogeneity; homogenization.

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