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Brazilian literature

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Brazilian literature is written in the Portuguese language by Brazilians or in Brazil, even if prior to Brazil's

independence from Portugal, in 1822. During the 20th century Brazilian literature gradually shifted to a different andmore Brazilian literary use of the Portuguese language.

Colonial periodThe first extant document that might be considered Brazilian literature is the Carta de Pero Vaz de Caminha (Pero

Vaz de Caminha's letter). It is written by Pero Vaz de Caminha to Manuel I of Portugal, which contains a description

of what Brazil looked like in 1500. Journals of voyagers and descriptive treatises on "Portuguese America"

dominated the literary production for the next two centuries, including well-known accounts by Jean de Léry and

Hans Staden, whose story of his encounter with the Tupi Indians on the coast of São Paulo was extraordinarily

influential for European conceptions of the New World.

A few more explicitly literary examples survive from this period, such as Basílio da Gama's epic poem celebrating

the conquest of the Missions by the Portuguese, and the work of Gregório de Mattos, a 17th century lawyer from

Salvador who produced a sizable amount of satirical, religious, and secular poetry. Matos drew heavily from

Baroque influences such as the Spanish poets Luis de Góngora and Francisco de Quevedo.

Neoclassicism was widespread in Brazil during the mid-18th century, following the Italian style. Literature was often

produced by members of temporary or semi-permanent academies and most of the content was in the pastoral genre.

The most important literary centre in colonial Brazil was the prosperous Minas Gerais region, known for its gold

mines, where a thriving proto-nationalist movement had begun. The most important poets were Cláudio Manuel da

Costa, Tomás Antônio Gonzaga, Alvarenga Peixoto and Manuel Inácio da Silva Alvarenga, all them involved in an

uprising against the colonial power. Gonzaga and Costa were exiled to Africa as a consequence.

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Academia Brasileira de Letras, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Romanticism

Neoclassicism lasted for an unnaturally long time,

stifling innovation and restricting literary creation. It

was only in 1836 that Romanticism began influencing

Brazilian poetry on a large scale, principally through

the efforts of the expatriate poet Gonçalves de

Magalhães. A number of young poets, such as Casimiro

de Abreu, began experimenting with the new style soon

afterward. This period produced some of the first

standard works of Brazilian literature.

The key features of the literature of the new-born

country are exaggerated affect, nationalism, celebration

of nature and the initial introduction of colloquial

language. Romantic literature soon became very popular. Novelists like Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, ManuelAntônio de Almeida and José de Alencar published their works in serial form in the newspapers and became national

celebrities.

Around 1850, a transition began, centered around Álvares de Azevedo. Azevedo's novel  Noite na Taverna (English:

A Night at the Tavern) and his poetry, collected posthumously in  Lira dos Vinte Anos (English: Twenty-year-old

Lyre), became influential. Azevedo was largely influenced by the poetry of Lord Byron. This second Romantic

generation was obsessed with morbidity and death.

At the same time, poets such as Castro Alves, who wrote of the horrors of slavery ( Navio Negreiro), began writing

works with a specific progressive social agenda. The two trends coincided in one of the most important

accomplishments of the Romantic era: the establishment of a Brazilian national identity based on Indian ancestry and

the rich nature of the country. These traits first appeared in Gonçalves Dias' epic poem  I-Juca Pirama, but soon

became widespread. The consolidation of this sub-genre (indigenism) is found in two famous novels by José de

Alencar: The Guarani, about a family of Portuguese colonists who took Indians as servants but were later slain by an

enemy tribe, and Iracema, about a Portuguese shipwrecked man who lives among the Indians and marries a beautiful

Indian woman. Iracema is especially lyrical, opening with five paragraphs of pure free-style prose-poetry describing

the title character.

Gonçalves Dias Álvares de Azevedo José de Alencar Castro Alves

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Fagundes Varela Franklin Távora

Realism

The decline of Romanticism, along with a series of social transformations, occurred in the middle of the 19thcentury. A new form of prose writing emerged, including analysis of the indigenous people and description of the

environment, in the regionalist authors (such as Franklin Távora and João Simões Lopes Neto). Under the influence

of Naturalism and of writers like Émile Zola, Aluísio Azevedo wrote O Cortiço, with characters that represent all

social classes and categories of the time. Brazilian Realism was not very original at first, but it took on extraordinary

importance because of Machado de Assis and Euclides da Cunha.

Machado de Assis

Perhaps the most important writer of Brazilian Realism is Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839 – 1908), the

natural son of a half black wallpainter and a Portuguese woman, whose only education, besides literacy classes, was

the extensive reading of borrowed books.

Working as typesetter at a publishing house, he was soon acquainted with most of the world's literature and even

managed to grasp something of English and French. In his early career he wrote several best-selling novels

(including  A Mão e a Luva and  Ressurreição) which, despite their overzealous Romanticism, already show his

vivacious humour and some of his pessimism towards the conventions of society.

After being introduced to Realism, Machado de Assis changed his style and his themes, producing some of the most

remarkable prose ever written in Portuguese. The style served as the medium for his corrosive humour and his

intense pessimism, which was very far from the plain conceptions of his contemporaries.

Machado's most crucial works include:

•  Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (Posthumous Memories of Bras Cubas), the fictional autobiography of arecently deceased man, written by himself "from beyond." It is entirely anti-Romantic and ridicules the society of 

Rio de Janeiro of the time. This book contains one of the most pitiless sentences about love ever written:

"Marcela amou-me durante quinze meses e onze contos de réis; nada mais. (Marcela loved me for fifteen months

and eleven thousand reis; nothing more)".

•  Dom Casmurro purports to be the autobiography of a lonely man who has left his wife and his only son after

enjoying years of happy conjugal life. The novel is famous in the Portuguese-speaking world for its analysis of a

(possible, but never proven or admitted) case of adultery.

•• Quincas Borba

• O Alienista, the short story about a psychiatrist who founds a hospital for the mentally ill in a small town and later

engages in profound investigations on the nature and the cure of mental illness, greatly upsetting the town'slifestyle.

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Machado was also a minor poet, writing mostly casual poetry of extraordinary correctness and beauty. His reputation

as a novelist has kept his poetry in print, and recent criticism has regarded it better than that of many of his

contemporaries.

Machado de Assis Aluísio Azevedo Raul Pompéia Olavo Bilac

Raimundo Correia

Pre-ModernismThe period between 1895 and 1922 is called Pre-Modernism by Brazilian scholars because, though there is no clear

predominance of any style, there are some early manifestations of Modernism. The Pre-Modern era is curious, as the

French school of Symbolism did not catch on and most authors of Realism still maintained their earlier styles and

their reputations (including Machado de Assis and poet Olavo Bilac). Some authors of this time, like Monteiro

Lobato, Lima Barreto, Simões Lopes Neto and Augusto dos Anjos.

Euclides da Cunha

A notorious writer highly inf luenced by the determinism, Cunha was always tormented by his family problems (he

was killed by his wife's lover) and had to face political opposition because of his opinions. As a freelance journalist

working for O Estado de São Paulo he covered the Canudos War -- a popular revolt with some egalitarian and

Christian-fundamentalist traits that took place in Bahia in 1895-97. His stories, together with some essays he wrote

about the people and the geography of the Brazilian North-East, were published in a thick volume called Os Sertões

( Rebellion in the Backlands).

In his work Cunha put forward the revolutionary thesis that the Brazilian state was a violent and foreign entity,

rejected (but often tolerated) by the vast majority of the illiterate and dispossessed population, some of whom

preserved beliefs and behaviours that had not changed in a thousand years or more. He discovered, for instance, thatSebastianism was then present in the Brazilian North-East and that many medieval Portuguese rhymes, folk-tales and

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traditions were still kept by the coarse people of the "sertões". This population did not accept secularism, the

Republican government and, especially, justice of peace.

His book Os Sertões is composed by three parts called "The Land", "The Man" and "The fight". Such organization of 

the book reinforce the idea that the environment where a man was born, the social aspects of this place and this man

culture may define what he will become. This principle is known as determinism, a way of thought that deeply

influence the Brazilian literature during the mid and late 19th century and the early 20th century.

Euclides da Cunha Lima Barreto Augusto dos Anjos

ModernismModernism began in Brazil with the Week of Modern Art, in 1922. The 1922 Generation was a nickname for the

writers Mário de Andrade ( Paulicéia Desvairada,  Macunaíma), Oswald de Andrade ( Memórias Sentimentais de

 João Miramar ), Manuel Bandeira, Cassiano Ricardo and others, all of whom combined nationalist tendencies withan interest in European modernism. Some new movements such as surrealism were already important in Europe, and

began to take hold in Brazil during this period.

Mário de Andrade

Mário de Andrade was born in São Paulo. He worked as a professor and was one of the organizers of the Week of 

Modern Art. He researched Brazilian folklore and folk music and used it in his books, avoiding the European style.

His Brazilian anti-hero is Macunaíma, a product of ethnical and cultural mixture. Andrade's interest in folklore and

his use of colloquial language were extremely influential, to the point that his innovations, at first revolutionary,

came to dominate Brazilian literature.

Oswald de Andrade

Oswald de Andrade, another participant in the Week of Modern Art in 1922, worked as a journalist in São Paulo.

Born into a wealthy family, he travelled to Europe several times. Of the generation of 1922, Oswald de Andrade best

represents the rebellious characteristics of the modernist movement. He is the author of the  Manifesto Antropófago

(Cannibal Manifesto) (1927), in which he says it is necessary that Brazil, like a cannibal, eat foreign culture and, in

digestion, create its own culture.

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Mario de Andrade Oswald de Andrade José Lins do Rego

Post-ModernismWhat defined Brazilian modernism were two main traits: experimentalism in language and an enhanced social

consciousness, or a mix between the two - as was the case with Osvald de Andrade, who was briefly attracted

towards the communist movement. The reaction to modernism, then, assumed the form of a mix between its most

salient trait, the use of more formal literary language (as was the case of the so-called "generation of 1945", whose

twin hallmarks were, firstly, the highly physical poetry of João Cabral de Melo Neto, who opposed Carlos

Drummond de Andrade's poetic modernism, and secondly the sonnets - on both the Italian and English model - of 

the early Vinicius de Moraes), followed by varying doses, according to the author considered, of subjectivism,

political conservatism and militant Catholicism.

Two writers from that "school" that have published after the 1950s are without a doubt already inside the canon of 

Brazilian literature: Clarice Lispector, whose existentialist novels and short stories are filled with

stream-of-consciousness and epiphanies, and João Guimarães Rosa, whose experimental language has changed the

face of Brazilian literature forever. His novel Grande Sertão: Veredas has been compared to James Joyce's Ulysses

or Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Following in the wake of conservative subjectivism inaugurated by the militantly Catholic novelists-cum-polemicists

Octavio de Faria, Lúcio Cardoso, Cornélio Penna and Gustavo Corção, Nelson Rodrigues made his career as

playwright and sports journalist. His plays and short stories - the latter mostly originally published as newspaper

 feulletons - chronicled the social mores of the 1950s and 1960s; adultery and sexual pathologies in general being amajor fixation of his. His sports writing describes the evolution of football into the national passion of Brazil. He

was heavily critical of the young leftists who opposed the military dictatorship after the 1964 coup; for that he was

penned as right-wing and conservative. For a time heavily pro-dictatorship, he had to suffer the tragic fate of having

one his sons being tortured and incarcerated for belonging to an underground guerrilla organization.

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ContemporaryContemporary Brazilian literature is, on the whole, very much focused on city life and all its aspects: loneliness,

violence, political issues and media control. Writers like Rubem Fonseca, Sérgio Sant'Anna have written important

books with these themes in the 1970s, breaking new ground in Brazilian literature, up until then mostly having dealt

with rural life.

New trends since the 1980s have included works by authors such as João Gilberto Noll, Milton Hatoum, BernardoCarvalho, João Almino, Adriana Lisboa and Cristovão Tezza.

Poets such as Ferreira Gullar and Manoel de Barros are among the most acclaimed within literary circles in Brazil,

the former had been nominated for the Nobel Prize.

Lygia Fagundes Telles João Ubaldo Ribeiro Moacyr Scliar

References• (Portuguese) Galvão, Walnice Nogueira (2005). As Musas sob Assédio: Literatura e indústria cultural no Brasil.

• (Portuguese) Coutinho, Afrânio (2004). A Literatura no Brasil.

• (Portuguese) Lopes, Denilson (2007). A Delicadeza: estética, experiência e paisagens.

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Article Sources and Contributors 8

Article Sources and ContributorsBrazilian literature  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=540305383 Contributors: AKeen, Ahoerstemeier, Anonymous from the 21st century, Anthrophilos, Aristophanes68,Attilios, Aude, Auréola, AxelBoldt, Bcat, Big iron, CalJW, Calton, CanisRufus, Cerme, Chick Bowen, Chris the speller, ChrisGualtieri, ClaretAsh, Clicketyclack, Closedmouth, Cmdrjameson,DanMS, DanielGSouza, Doctor Sunshine, Download, Editor br, Eladynnus, Epbr123, Epolk, F Soaj, Felipe Menegaz, Gabriel Ataide, Gaius Cornelius, Guilherme Paula, Hentzer, Hmains,Infrogmation, Jbmurray, Jim marrone, Jonkerz, Jtkiefer, K. Annoyomous, Kallerna, Kevyn, LilHelpa, Macgreco, Magicmonster, MakeRocketGoNow, Mhking, Milena Popovic, Modulatum,Neelix, NickShaforostoff, Ninguém, Omassey, Only, PaddySnuffles, Parababelico, PedroPVZ, Peter Chastain, Philip Trueman, Psy guy, Qatter, R'n'B, Raonisousa, Ricardo Carneiro Pires,Ricardo Frantz, Rockslave, Search4.0, Selecciones de la Vida, SimonP, Spharion, Stenzowski, The Ogre, Tom-b, Tommy amorim, Travelbird, Varlaam, Vivafelis, WOtP, Wavelength, Wayland,

Woilorio, 72 anonymous edits

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