The Modern Essay in Brazil
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The Modern Essay in Brazil Maria Arminda do Nascimento Arruda 1 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract We analyze the construction of the modern essay in Brazil, inaugurated by the so-called 1930s generation: Gilberto Freyre’s Casa-grande e senzala, Caio Prado Júnior’s Evolução política do Brasil, and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s Raízes do Brasil. Based on the classic theoretical references on the essay, we approach the modern Brazilian essay under three aspects. First, its context and historical significance, especially from the point of view of the intellectual tradition outlined by Antonio Candido. We argue that the Brazilian essay emerges in interface with modernist art and the socio-political problem of the country’s modernization. Secondly, we argue that Holanda’s work stands out in the 1930s Brazilian essayism as the most effective accomplishment of the essay as a form. Finally, we show how Florestan Fernandes’ intellectual and historical experience represents both an update and a breakdown of Brazilian essayism in the 1970s. Keywords Essay . Brazilian thought . Brazilian sociology . Sergio Buarque de Holanda .
Antonio Candido . Florestan Fernandes
I Regardless of the controversies concerning essay as a genre, style is also subject to debate nowadays. Essay as a form is debatable under three points of view: its concept, its relevance as an expression of scientific knowledge, and even as a counterpoint to other forms of discourse. Regarded as the utmost intellectual language, the essay was linked to philosophy, literature, arts, and cultural criticism, covering different subjects and moving through different domains. The characterization of essayism is a permanent challenge, as it assumes several modalities. However, we can find common aspects that make it possible to recognize a canon, outlined in the sixteenth century by Montaigne’s
* Maria Arminda do Nascimento Arruda [email protected]
1
Sociology Department, Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Human Sciences, University of São Paulo (USP), Rua do Lago, 717, sala 100, Cidade Universitária, São Paulo, SP 05508-080, Brazil
The American Sociologist
Essays, who “invents the modern essay and can be regarded as master of most who come after him” (Bloom 2005; p. xi), moralists, writers, philosophers and scientists like Freud. According to Bloom, Montaigne outlined essay as a form and the decisive aspects of the genre: clarity of judgement, strength of ideas, perspectivism, presence of the author, free and dynamic text construction, fluid form (idem, ibidem, p. 26–34). These features led Georg Lukács to regard the essay as a “work of art, a genre”, as he considered “criticism as an art and not a science” (Lukács 1974, p. 1). For this reason, Adorno, in the mid-1950s, more than forty years after Lukács’s 1911 text, wrote about the Lukacsian concept of essay in the context of the disputes regarding the dominating Positivism in the German academic environment. Adorno says Lukács’s conception withholds essay’s autonomy, as the
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