Raquel Machado Gonçalves Campos

Anonymity and pseudonym: production, circulation and reception of literary texts in Brazil in the nineteenth century

The objective of the project is to analyze the regime of anonymous and pseudonymous publication in nineteenth century Brazilian literature. It seeks to go beyond the general realization that the authors disguised themselves by means of the suppression or substitution of their proper name, such a regime examines within the history of the authors function in literary texts, and according to four main axes. In the first place, e try to understand the uses and functions of anonymity and the pseudonym for authors who have used them. In relation to this and attentive to the main explanation given for these two phenomena, we investigate its ties with the social status of the writer in Brazil, according to the hypothesis that the refusal to sign the texts was due to the lack of legitimacy of the literary activity. Shifting the problem from a sociological question to a more literary one, it is also questioned the relations between anonymous and pseudonymous publication and the different literary genres of the novel, the short story and the chronicle. Finally, following the perspective of the cultural history of writing and reading, we try to understand the possible relations with the support and the impacts of this regime of publication in the reading and interpretation of literary works.

Color and racial identity in the biographies of Machado de Assis (1917-2006)

Description: The objective of this project is to analyze how the elements of color and racial identity were treated in six biographies about Machado de Assis: "Machado de Assis: literary course in seven conferences at the São Paulo Art Society" (1917), by Alfredo Pujol; "Machado de Assis, critical and biographical study" (1936), by Lúcia Miguel Pereira; "The life of Machado de Assis" (1965), by Luiz Viana Fillho; "The youth of Machado de Assis" (1971), by Jean-Michel Massa; "Life and Work of Machado de Assis" (1981), by Raymundo Magalhães Júnior; and "Machado de Assis, a Brazilian genius" (2006), by Daniel Piza. It is also about seeking to understand the relationships between such treatments and, on one hand, the paradigms of literary criticism; and, on the other hand, the Brazilian social thought, as both developed throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.