Authorship and the gesture of writing in some moments of Brazilian literature

Abstract

Authorship, as a historical phenomenon, is built through strategies within and without of the literary text. By becoming theme within the narrative as a gesture in action, the fictional authorship stages the expectations and models in circulation, serving as adjustment or confirmation of certain ideas about literally production. In this article, we will retrieve moments of Brazilian literature in which the narrator is the supposed author and therefore discourses about the process of creating the book we currently read. From the beginning of the twentieth century, we examine Recordações do Escrivão Isaías Caminha (1909), by Lima Barreto, São Bernardo (1934), by Graciliano Ramos, and O Amanuense Belmiro (1937), by Cyro dos Anjos; as a pivotal point for contemporary literature, we examine the novel Em Liberdade (1981), by Silviano Santiago; and, finally, we investigate two novels written by women, Azul e Dura (2002), by Beatriz Bracher, and Nada a Dizer (2010), by Elvira Vigna. Beyond narratives in first person, most of these works bring the shape of the fictional journal, therefore staging the writing gesture related to matters such as sincerity, intimacy and spontaneity.