Brazilian Modernism: A Discourse of Unity and Suppression

"This study is a critique of the hegemonic discourse of Brazilian Modernism. I examine the rhetoric of Brazilian literary historiography and criticism, with special emphasis on the way the modernist movement of the 1920s was historicized. I demonstrate how this kind of scholarship complies with the discourse of modernist intellectuals about the historical significance of Modernism. For this reason, I refer to this area of scholarship in Brazil as ""modernist historiography and criticism."" I challenge some of the basic assumptions of modernist criticism and examine issues that have been elided or suppressed by the linear narrative of Modernism. I approach the problem through three distinct but interrelated areas. The first chapter presents a historical account of the formation of modernist historiography and criticism. I demonstrate how the field of cultural production was affected by state-led cultural and educational policies and I examine the role of modernist intellectuals within the Vargas administration in the development of the field of literary historiography. In the second chapter, I focus on the elided content of the Belle Epoque literary production with an emphasis on the development of the cultural field in that historical period. I analyze the work of Joao do Rio, which in many ways represented a more radical cultural project than that of the modernists. My third chapter offers an analysis of early modernist production with an emphasis on the work of Mario de Andrade. My reading of Andrade's work ties together Andrade's reliance on conventional definitions of literature and culture, his first experiments with primitivism, his contradictory view of modernity, his definition of nationhood, as well as the support he received from the coffee aristocracy."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Portuguese

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Gouveia, Saulo Rezende

Contributors dc:contributor

• Sousa, Ronald

• Literature, Latin American

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3223599

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/86137