Literature, and Other Arts and Areas of Knowledge

Research Projects:

Forms of comedy and comic in Brazilian theatre of the 19th century

Description: Having studied the Brazilian theatre of the 19th century, especially the dramatic work of José de Alencar and authors of the realistic generation, the comedies of Machado de Assis and theatrical ideas of our major playwrights, writers, critics, and intellectuals, from Romanticism to Naturalism, I intend to make the most of the experience gained over the years in a study of not only historical basis, but especially of critical and interpretive basis. The object of this research project is the Brazilian comedy of the 19th century, the comedy of popular extraction, which conquered the audience of the time with a reasonable variety of comic forms and resources. The task I intend to perform is: to study the formal procedures of the comedy of manners, operetta, magic, revue entertainment theatre, and burletta, from a reduced corpus; and to deepen the analysis and interpretation of comic texts, without forgetting the social and historical context in which the plays were written. In this sense, I made some choices, to avoid dispersal and generalisations, believing in the representativeness of the following authors and works: Martins Pena - the short comedies O Judas em sábado de Aleluia and Os ciúmes de um pedestre or O terrível capitão do mato; Artur Azevedo - the operetta Abel Helena, delicious parody of La belle Hélène, text by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy and music by Offenbach; Moreira Sampaio - the magic A cornucópia do amor; Artur Azevedo and Moreira Sampaio - the revue entertainment theatre O Homem, based on the novel of the same name by Aluísio Azevedo; Artur Azevedo - the burletta A capital federal, a play that summarizes all forms of comedy and the comic practiced by our comedians of the 19th century.

Professor in charge: João Roberto Gomes de Faria (jroberto@usp.br)

 

Study on the works of Clarice Lispector

Description: Analysis and interpretation of Clarice Lispector in light of psychoanalytic referential and critical categories of modern narrative addressing aspects of negativity present in the writings - rupture, corrosion, transgression, and inversions of meaning.

Professor in charge: Yudith Rosenbaum (yudith@uol.com.br)

 

Psychoanalysis and Literature: The work of Guimarães Rosa

Description: Study on the varied work considering the stylistic and thematic aspects of the modern narrative and the analytic referential. The study is open to authors of the context of the literature of the 20th century, which can dialogue with modern narrative and psychoanalysis. Study on the work of Guimarães Rosa.

Professor in charge: Yudith Rosenbaum (yudith@uol.com.br)

 

Figures of exorbitancy in the Brazilian literature from the 20th century

Description: Notion that belongs both to the field of philosophy and literature, the exorbitancy lacks precise definition, assuming less specific content than a symbolic operation. Experience of splurging and dilapidation, its corresponding writing implies not only the primacy of hyperbole, but also the subversion of paradigms. That is why, in the 20th century, the literary exorbitancy is linked to transgression, making text a preferred mean of knowledge of the territories in which the subjects lose their limits. It is, therefore, the effort of giving voice to the interdict, which was banished of the individual or collective memory to be presented as rest, surplus, or waste. Taking what happened in Europe as an example, where the artistic vanguards put this investigation at the centre of their poetics, in Brazil the intent of creating an excessive writing also won significant space from Modernism. Macunaíma may be thought of as the founder book of a literary lineage that develops around the figures of exorbitancy, constituting an interesting starting point to interrogate certain particularities of Brazilian letters in the following decades. In dialogue with the modernist legacy, works such as those of Nelson Rodrigues, Hilda Hilst, Roberto Piva, or Dalton Trevisan, among others, will review and discuss the association between exorbitancy and the Brazilian experience, opening new horizons of interpretation.

Professor in charge: Eliane Robert Moraes (elianermoraes@usp.br)