Modernist literature and peripheral literature: intelectual engagements of representation and self-representation

Abstract

In the last four decades the Brazilian sociopolitical context has generated a literary manifestation, self-described as peripheral literature. Almost exclusively produced by writers from urban outskirts of major centers. Based on this assumption, the present work seeks to unveil how they manifest themselves to the relations of representation and self-representation in this form of narrative, to the detriment of the mode of representation used by the modernists. It is understood here that this new literary manifestation collides with the so-called Modernist Tradition, belonging to highly literate social classes produced a literature that took the function of Represent the marginalized classes (mainly the northeastern, the sertanejo and the black favelado). He did this through a discourse in the mouth of subalternly characterized characters (possibly a consequence of nonliteracy as soon as non-literacy), as Fabiano of Dry Lives (1938); Severino, of Death and Vida Severina (1955-6) and Riobaldo, of Grande Sertão: Veredas (1956). In this sense, this is the guiding principle of the main hypothesis raised here it is this function, which for a long time was performed by the modernist intellectuals, is now claimed and taken by individuals from the social margins (the marginal intellectual), but with different intentions.