Tese de Doutorado - dacex

ABSTRACT
This thesis is a rereading of the serialized sensation novels Condessa Vésper (1882),
Girândola de amores (1882), Filomena Borges (1884), Malta, Mattos ou Mata?
(1885), O coruja (1890), A mortalha de Alzira (1894) and Livro de uma sogra (1895),
written by Aluísio Azevedo, a 19 th century writer regarded as the forerunner of realistnaturalist
narrative in Brazil. These novels have been classified as sub-literature by
Brazilian literary historians. Canonic criticism and its epigones underrate these novels
by rationalizing that they are not in compliance with realist-naturalist literary
standards; condemning them for being geared to the market and for catering to the
reading public’s demands, and finally, disqualifying them for having been written in a
hybrid language, half-way between romanticism and realist-naturalism.
A closer reading of these works, under a theoretical perspective that articulates
literary form and socio-historical reality, revealed that the hybrid literary discourse
does not indicate lack of consistency on the writer’s part, but rather, formalizes the
real contradiction lived by the Brazilian society in the 19 th century, caught between
slavery and liberalism, the latter linked to a conservative renewal project – and thus
attached to the realist-naturalist discourse – and the former, linked to an outdated
conservative project, and therefore attached to the universe of romantic values. So,
socio-economic reality, connected to two different paradigms, is carried over to a
literary discourse that sways between these two spheres. Hybridism is a way of
adjusting imported novel subgenres to a local socio-economic context.
It can also be seen that Aluísio Azevedo’s hybrid language was used to materialize
the writer’s illuminist-bourgeois project that consisted in educating the reading public,
prompting them to realize the immaturity, weakness and deception of the romantic
language, by gradually feeding them realist-naturalist literature in serialized sensation
novels. Aluísio Azevedo infuses these novels with a touch of science in order to
educate, discipline, and control the reader. The illuminist project, geared to reading,
confirms that the writer did not let himself be one-dimensionally conquered by the
readers’ and market’s demands.
This illuminist project, however, was never carried out to its fullest. First of all, in the
first novels there is the monolog form, which imposes the realist-naturalist language
in an attempt to deflate romanticism. In a second phase, in a less didactic way, it
becomes effective by leading to the carnavalization of romantic language without,
however, imposing a realist-naturalist discursive core. In a third stage, an
exacerbated romanticism re-emerges, weakening the illuminist project. And finally, in
his last novel, the illuminist and rational pedagogy undergoes a carnavalization
process, toning down the realist-naturalist language.
Rereading these novels we come to the realization that the writer’s work cannot be
dichotomized into sub-literary illegible novels and literary novels (O mulato, Casa de
pensão, O cortiço). There is a pedagogic proposal underpinning the construction of
the serial novels that should serve as preamble to the reading of realist-naturalist
novels. This proposal, however, is shattered; and this is where the importance of
these underrated works lies, as means of providing access to the contradictions that
shape the concept of literary language in Aluísio Azevedo’s works. Upon analyzing
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