The pearl necklace
Subtitle: toward an archaeology of Brazilian transition discourse
By: Roberto Reis ; translated by Aparecida de Godoy Johnson.
Publisher: University Press of Florida, Center for Latin American Studies
Published: 1992
Place of publication: Gainesville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 178
Subjects: Brazilian prose literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism.; Brazilian prose literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Modernism (Literature) -- Brazil.; Literature and society -- Brazil.
Description: "In his first book-length publication in English, Roberto Reis reevaluates the Brazilian literary canon, stressing the authoritarian undercurrent in much of that country's cultural discussion and rejecting the idea that literature has been a force for positive social change.".

"Reis analyzes eight works of fiction written during what he calls the "transition period," the years between 1850 and 1950, when Brazil advanced from an agrarian society into an urban society. His map of the country's modernization reveals the role of intellectuals - often co-opted in construction of a strong, central state - and the aversion toward history that he says characterizes much of Brazilian social formation.

Even Brazil's leftist literature parallels the history written by the dominant groups, he argues, and it perpetuates the unjust, closed, and elitist structure of the State. He sums up the concerns of the book by asserting "History must be taken as a problem."".

"Organized around the metaphor of a pearl necklace, each chapter (or bead on the strand) addresses a specific feature of the authoritarian question. The writers discussed - those ignored by contemporary Brazilian criticism as well as those canonized - include Jose de Alencar, Humberto de Campos, Jose Lins do Rego, Graciliano Ramos, Galeao Coutinho, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade.

Machado de Assis and Erico Verissimo are the two discussed here "whose literary practice fractures the monolithic solidity of discursive certainty," linking them to "writers such as Oswald de Andrade, Joao Guimaraes Rosa, and Clarice Lispector" (Randal Johnson in the foreword)."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-172) and index.