This article offers a perspective on the national problem present in the brasilian regionalist novel A bagaceira (1928), by José Américo de Almeida. Its main character, Lucio, young reformer of the nordestine fazenda, tries to found a new national community by binding together two confronted cultural worlds: the brejo and the sertão. First, I derivate the structure of the novelistic world from Lucio´s personality; according to this, the reading of nature (sensible world) provides the knowledge of the brasilian culture. Nonetheless, the national synthesis fails because Lucio doesn´t consider this reading nor does he transform its inherited image. My thesis is that this situation is due to an epistemological shift: from the medieval model, which recognises the imaginary as valid foundation for effective knowledge, to the modern model, that detaches the imaginary from the realm of experience.
Keywords:
A bagaceira, José Américo de Almeida, nation, Brasilian literature, regionalism
Concha Ferreccio, P. (2020). A bagaceira and the nation’s impossible closure. Revista Chilena De Literatura, (101), pp. 181–202. Retrieved from https://revistaliteratura.uchile.cl/index.php/RCL/article/view/57316
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