Banca de DEFESA: Eliane Cristina Chieregatto

DEPLOYMENT OF COLLECTIVE FORCES IN BRAZILIAN NOVEL

Brazilian literature. Novel. Individualism. Collectivity. Identity.

This thesis raises a theoretical question based on the observation that the conceptions of the novel as an "individualist reorientation" defended by Ian Watt (1997-2010) or as a "bourgeois epic" assured by Georg Lukács (2000) are not efficient for thinking about the Brazilian case. In Brazil, as Antonio Candido (2000) and Flora Süssekind (1984-1990) in particular point out, novelistic prose emerged in the 19th century committed to the formation of national identity. Amalgamated with this was the prerogative of Brazilian décor, whose axis of correspondence systematized the relationship between identity and nationality. Assuming a commitment to identity formation meant that, from the very beginning, the novel was activated by social dynamics and historical circumstances. Even in contemporary novels, set in the first decades of the 21st century, although the presence of a "nomadic self" as an expression of "individual experience" is prominent, there are a number of voices claiming to exist. This gives the novel produced in Brazil an ideological political meaning that mobilizes the collective and the "other", as suggested by Bakhtinian theory (1990). However, considering what Echevarría (2000) argues, it is necessary to bear in mind that the history of the European novel differs in very precise aspects from that written in the Latin American context.