Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction to Volume 3
- 1 The literary historiography of Brazil
- 2 Colonial Brazilian literature
- 3 Brazilian poetry from the 1830s to the 1880s
- 4 Brazilian poetry from 1878 to 1902
- 5 The Brazilian theatre up to 1900
- 6 Brazilian fiction from 1800 to 1855
- 7 The Brazilian novel from 1850 to 1900
- 8 Brazilian fiction from 1900 to 1945
- 9 Brazilian prose from 1940 to 1980
- 10 The Brazilian short story
- 11 Brazilian poetry from 1900 to 1922
- 12 Brazilian poetry from Modernism to the 1990s
- 13 The Brazilian theatre in the twentieth century
- 14 Brazilian popular literature (the literatura de cordel)
- 15 Literary criticism in Brazil
- 16 The essay: architects of Brazilian national identity
- 17 The Brazilian and the Spanish American literary traditions: a contrastive view
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
10 - The Brazilian short story
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Introduction to Volume 3
- 1 The literary historiography of Brazil
- 2 Colonial Brazilian literature
- 3 Brazilian poetry from the 1830s to the 1880s
- 4 Brazilian poetry from 1878 to 1902
- 5 The Brazilian theatre up to 1900
- 6 Brazilian fiction from 1800 to 1855
- 7 The Brazilian novel from 1850 to 1900
- 8 Brazilian fiction from 1900 to 1945
- 9 Brazilian prose from 1940 to 1980
- 10 The Brazilian short story
- 11 Brazilian poetry from 1900 to 1922
- 12 Brazilian poetry from Modernism to the 1990s
- 13 The Brazilian theatre in the twentieth century
- 14 Brazilian popular literature (the literatura de cordel)
- 15 Literary criticism in Brazil
- 16 The essay: architects of Brazilian national identity
- 17 The Brazilian and the Spanish American literary traditions: a contrastive view
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Contributing to the encounter of multiple cultural and literary sources in the Brazilian short story, reflecting its Latin American identity, is an ahistorical, oral tradition of tales and legends from Amerindian, African, and European origins that came to be reflected in popular literature and folklore. While encompassing this folkloric background, a historical account of the modern Brazilian short story can be divided profitably into three chronological stages of development. The first extends from its nineteenth-century romantic origins and realist practices, dominated by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908), topre-modernist currents before 1922. Modernism, a second phase centered in the 1920s and 1930s, provided new aesthetic criteria crucial for the development of the modern story. Its national, artistic program, based on Brazilianized language and the rediscovery of national reality, continues to guide story writers. Contemporary and postmodern trends – with a sharp popular, urban, socio-political orientation filtered through complex, highly referential narrative strategies for which the short story has become a preferred form – constitute a third phase leading from the 1950s and 1960s to the 1990s. Common to the three phases of development are stylistic and thematic currents in Brazilian writing, such as Regionalismo [Regionalism], race, social and psychological analysis, dialectal and expressive differences in Brazilian language, and formal experimentation. A brief overview of each stage will serve as a frame of reference for our historical, interpretive survey.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature , pp. 207 - 232Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996