Gregorio(s) de Matos: Patterns of Representation and Orders of Discourse

ABSTRACT

Stemming from expedients from a Foucauldian underpinning for discourse analysis, this article deals with a textual corpus in Portuguese, consisting of textbooks, histories of Brazilian literature and recent essays, in which the literary figure of Gregorio de Matos is found. It aims to reflect upon the patterns of representing such a figure in those textual instances, with regards to bringing forth the implied orders of discourse. By the analysis of the tactics of structural coercion and the implicated material effects - both tactics and effects create a certain image of Gregorio de Matos that structures an order of discourse that, in turn, structures that very same image -, we aim at bringing forth the plays of truth that configure experiences that are related, in particular, to the notion of author, artistic creation and literature history, and, in general, to the notion of subjectivity and agency.

KEYWORDS:
Order of Discourse; Patterns of Representation; Gregorio de Matos

RESUMO

O presente artigo, a partir de certos expedientes de base foucaultiana para a análise do discurso, examinará um corpus de textos em língua portuguesa, feito de livros didáticos, histórias da literatura brasileira e ensaios recentes, em que figura a personagem literária Gregório de Matos, de modo a refletir acerca dos padrões de representá-la nestas instâncias textuais, com vistas a explicitar as ordens do discurso que supõem. Pela análise das táticas de coerção estrutural e dos efeitos materiais implicados - ambos, táticas e efeitos, formando determinada imagem de Gregório de Matos estruturante de certa ordem de discurso que, por sua vez, estrutura-a -, pretende-se explicitar os jogos de verdade que configuram determinadas experiências relativas, em particular, à noção de autor, criação artística e história da literatura, e, em geral, à noção de subjetividade e agência.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Ordem do discurso; Padrões de representar; Gregório de Matos

Introduction

Given that this article is anchored in text-discourse-enunciation studies, there is a set of premises, methodological operations and horizons of expectations related to these studies that needs to be explained.

The object of the material analysis, activated by the epistemological attitude in the field of discourse studies, is, for this work, the utterance, understood as a unit of sense (contextual meaning),¹ mediator of the concrete actualization of a given meaning with schematic potency for the production of a given meaning. This mediation presumes the existence of a discursive plane and a textual plane, the former constraining the construction of the latter, the latter structuring the order of the first. Such theoretical, procedural attitude confers on the lines of thinking adopted herein a structuralist disposition, making possible epistemic marks and styles of thinking to be organized according to axes of virtuality, actualization, and materiality.

In this framework, the article aims at operating with the notion of order of discourse as a machinery of generation of meaning, as the structural condition for the production, reception, circulation and maintenance of sense. The reflection on the structural constraints of representation will be a priority; the reflection on the textual effects implied thereof will derive from a path on which the virtuality of the order of discourse upon material configurations is examined.

To such an end, a textual corpus in which the figure of Gregorio de Matos, the renowned poet in the Brazilian historical-literary scene, will be analyzed. Thus, we will consider the patterns of representation, extant in textbooks of elementary education, histories of literature of higher education and recent essays, considering such patterns to be modalities of history, social life, ways to know and manifest a given order of discourse. With that, we intend to bring forth truth plays that, at once, constrain by enabling and that enable by constraining certain experiential configurations to given existential coordinates in the particular scope of the notion of authorship in the history of literature and of artistic creation and in the general scope of the notion of subjectivity and agency.

1 Theoretical Approach

Operating, as we intend here, from the methodological propositions to discourse analysis in Foucault's The Order of Discourse implies four principles: reversal, discontinuity, specificity, and exteriority.

The first principle of reversal has to do with recognizing the "the negative action of a cutting-up and a rarefaction of discourse" (FOUCAULT, 1981, p.67)² "where tradition sees the source of discourses, the principle of their swarming abundance and of their continuity" (1981, p.67);³ that is, understanding discourse "should move in the at first sight paradoxical direction of a materialism of the incorporeal" (1981, p.69).⁴ Once the reversal that transforms the discursive source into the effect of the discursive machinery is performed, and as far as the second principle of discontinuity is concerned, one will not understand discourse as "a vast, unlimited discourse, continuous and silent, which is quelled and repressed [...] which we have the task of raising up by restoring the power of speech to it" (1981, p.67).⁵ On the contrary, "discourses must be treated as discontinuous practices, which cross each other, are sometimes juxtaposed with one another, but can just as well exclude or be unaware of each other" (1981, p.67).⁶ The third principle of specificity, in its turn, has to do with "not [resolving] discourse into a play of pre-existing significations; [...] not [imagining] that the world turns towards us a legible face which we would have only to decipher" (1981, p.67),⁷ which means saying, with Foucault (1981, p.67), that "we must conceive discourse as a violence which we do to things [...] and it is in this practice that the events of discourse find the principle of their regularity." Finally, the fourth principle of externality has to do with

not [going] from discourse towards its interior, hidden nucleus, towards the heart of a thought or a signification supposed to be manifested in it; but, on the basis of discourse itself, its appearance and its regularity, go towards its external conditions of possibility, towards what gives rise to the aleatory series of these events, and fixes its limits (1981, p.67).⁸

The methodology proposed in The Order of Discourse, concerned with the analysis of the structural constraints of discourse, flirts with the notion of utterance as the instance of discourse/virtuality-text/materiality mediation and with the summarizing notions of discourse qua history, qua society, qua knowledge and qua dialogue, proposed by Bolívar (2003). It flirts with, but it does not correspond to, for there is no concern in that book or even less in Foucault's varied analytical gestures in accomplishing a methodological, scientific, reproducible, precise stability. Introducing the rarefied, the discontinuous, the anonymous, the marginal, amongst other traits, as operators for thinking differs greatly from the projects of discourse studies as science, in the sad positivist meaning the word "science" may acquire.

The Foucauldian discourse analysis has to do with the genealogical method, which, in its turn, supposes an unstable archeology of discourse events, for it works with data "from diversity and dispersion, from happenstance of beginnings and of accidents" (REVEL. 2005, p.52).⁹ An archeogenealogy, in discourse analysis, "does not only seek the mark of singular events in the past, but it questions the very possibility of events: 'it will deduce from the contingency which makes us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing and thinking what we are, doing or thinking' (FOUCAULT apud REVEL, 2005, p.15)" (2005, p.53).¹⁰ Therefore, when making use of the theoretical expedients in The Order of Discourse, this article refrains from discourse analysis as valuing the capacity of agency of social actants and the possibility of resistance, empowerment, mobilization, etc. (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003; VAN DIJK, 2015), engaging itself in a discourse analysis as an ontology of the present and its truth regimes (AQUINO, 2016).

This article directs itself to the figuration of truth regimes from the textual corpus to be analyzed, relating itself "not to true propositions, but to the set of rules that make it possible to utter and to accept the conventions deemed as true at a given moment" (AQUINO, 2016),¹¹ not sharing thus the reflexive-humanist aesthetics of critical theory (HARAWAY, 1994; SILVA, 1994) especially in its critical discourse analysis versions (FLAIRCLOUGH, 2003; VAN DIJK, 2015). Dealing with the corpus analyzed herein and with the history that unravels from it is about sharing a whole other aesthetics, maybe, because one misses a name, a post-subjective (ROSE, 2001; SILVA, 1994) as well as a post-philological one, so to say.

2 The Listing and Description of the Corpus

To analyze the corpus, we need at first to list and describe it. The following tables 1, 2 and 3 contain excerpts from which the analytical path of this article will stem:

Table 1
Representation of Gregorio de Matos in a High School Textbook

Excerpt extracted from a textbook of Basic Education (ABAURRE; PONTARA, 2010a, pp.180-183)	Excerpt extracted from a supplementary material of revision of the textbook referred to on the left (ABAURRE; PONTARA, 2010b)
Gregorio de Matos: the first great Brazilian poet	The Baroque in Brazil
Gregorio de Matos had a solid educational background. As a Law Student in Coimbra, he got in touch with the humanist perspective that encouraged the reading of classical authors. In his works he followed the teachings of these literature masters. He became renowned for his lyrical, satirical and sacral poetry. The satirical poems were the ones that made him a famous Bahian poet, causing him to be exiled to Angola in 1694. In this chapter, you have seen that, although his lyrical and sacral works are extensive, the satirical poems were the ones that made him famous; because of them he received the name Hellmouth . In his texts, through an extremely critical gaze, the Bahian poet denounced the corruption of politicians and the moral debauchery that he saw in some powerful authorities at his time. Although written by the end of the 17th century, his critique in verse is still contemporary. In order to better understand the contemporaneity of Gregorio de Matos's satirical poems, we suggest that you choose some verses that may work as a caption of contemporary images or as a kind of "satirical synthesis" of the news of our time. [...]	Gregorio de Matos
	Considered the first great Brazilian poet, he studied Law in Coimbra, where he could read many classical authors, who influenced his poetry. → Gregorio de Matos's poetry is normally divided into lyrical, sacral, and satirical. → In the lyrical poetry, he turns to classical authors and privileges the development of an exemplar reasoning.
	Consider an example of Gregorio de Matos's lyrical poetry.
	[long suppressed example from the same book by Wisnik, quoted on the left]
	→ In the sacral poetry, the sense of sin, the idea of human frailty and the fear of death and eternal damnation are constant topics. The already presented poem "Finding Divine Infant's lost arm" is an example of Gregorio de Matos's sacral poetry. → Gregorio de Matos was known for his satirical poetry. In it, he portraits negative aspects of the society in which he lives. The vehemence with which he criticizes his contemporaries renders him the nickname "Hellmouth." Consider an example of his satirical poetry.
Gregorio de Matos and the critical portrait of Bahia. In Brazil, Gregorio de Matos will find the most powerful weapon to criticize the political scenario of his time in his satire. Following Juvenal's steps, the poet will ridicule the corrupt politicians who governed Bahia in such a debauched fashion that this would lead him to be exiled from his home land. In the excerpt below, consider how he criticizes the lack of principles of the politicians from his town: [...] in the state politics there has never been certain principles, [...] Ho! We are in Bahia, where flattery flies where truth frights and hypocrisy delights, let us follow this harmony of such a fatuous accord, and even if it is ignorance to follow others' known flaws, be it to me allowed, if greed is where being stupid is.12 MATOS, Gregorio de. In: WISNIK, José Miguel [Sel. e org.]. Poemas Escolhidos. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2010, pp.70-71	[another long suppressed poem from the same book by Wisnik, quoted on the left] 13

Table 2
Representation of Gregorio de Matos in a Book for University Entrance Examinations

Excerpt extracted from a book for university entrance examinations (CARVALHO; ROSADO, 2015)
Gregorio de Matos, the "Hellmouth"
The most important poet to the Baroque in Brazil was born in December 1633 and studied at a Jesuit school in Salvador, Bahia. In 1650, with his brother Eusébio de Matos, he went to Lisbon and then to Coimbra, where he studied Canonical Law. He majored in 1661. Several years later, Gregorio de Matos was given the nickname that very clearly expresses his way of acting and of seeing the world: "The Hellmouth." Variations such as "The Chilli-mouth" and "The Salt-mouth" stemmed from that. His family was big and powerful and his ancestors had come from Portugal. Here, they became landowners, plantation owners, cattle breeders, and politicians. After working as a judge and an attorney in Lisbon, he returned to Brazil in 1682 to work as a court judge in the Ecclesiastical Relation and as a Paymaster General at Sé Church. However, two years later, he was deposed from his position because he led a "non-Christian" life. At the end of 1680s, he became involved in an inquisitorial trial, but such trial had no great proportions, not having even been pursued. The poet had good friends in the metropolis. In 1694, he bothered so many powerful men in Bahia with his teasing poems that his friends thought it would be better to send him to Angola so that he could be safe. He returned from "exile" in the following year and once again was involved in troubles. He had to live in Recife, having stayed there until his demise at the age of 59. A debauched but good trickster, he could criticize his own time and see copies of his poems disputed by hand. Many of them were memorized by people, mainly, of course, those of a satirical tone.
[image of the frontcover of a 1775 work about Gregorio de Matos by Manuel Pereira Rabelo]
The corrupt government officials, the "unhates" (Portuguese merchants who extorted money from the people with unaffordable prices), and especially the "caramurus" (white people who had old and illustrious families who arrived here in the beginning of the colonization and who, for this very reason, considered themselves the owners of the land) irritated him the most. His poems were collected either by the police or by his brother Eusébio and only received a first edition in the 20th century. Gregorio de Matos's works can be divided as: a) Satirical works: through them, Gregorio satirizes all social classes, especially the clergy, the nuns, the "unhates" and "caramurus," the mulattoes and the authorities in general. Sometimes the vocabulary is scornful, vulgar. He uses African and indigenous loanwords, laying bare circumstances, events, and people.
[examples of unabridged poems, without bibliographical reference]
b) Lyrical: having in mind that all lyrical poetry is what expresses personal feelings about a certain thing, person or event, the Gregorian lyric can be divided as: 1. Lyrical-amorous: the one which praises the beloved one. In a kind, balanced language, it uses the sonnet as form of expression. 2. Erotic, lyrical-erotic or erotic-ironical: in this kind of poem, sonnets and roundels are extant, with vulgar words, ambiguous language, and puns.
[examples of unabridged poems, without bibliographical reference]
[sidenote] KNOWING MORE: In the Gregorian lyric, the amorous one, usually under the form of the sonnet, addresses white women; the erotic one, normally in the form of roundels, addresses black women and female mulattoes.
3. Religious (sacral): it corresponds to the final moment of Gregorian poetry. It is precisely with it, or through it, that we can observe the typically Baroque man in him. The clashes between sin and mercy, redemption or damnation, are very notoriously stressed.14
[examples of unabridged poems, without bibliographical reference][questions from admission exams prior to the year of 2015 on the aforementioned topic]

Table 3
Representation of Gregorio de Matos in an Anthology of his Works

Excerpt extracted from an anthology of Gregorio de Matos's works (SPINA, 1995, pp.80-83)

Gregorio de Matos's poems circulated hand in hand as manuscripts, and Bahia's governor, Don Joao de Alencastro, who greatly admired "the boldnesses of this muse," collected Gregorio de Matos's verses and had them transcribed in special books. Besides, there were copies of his admirers, amongst whom we find the licensee Manuel Pereira Rabelo, who also bequeathed to posterity the Poet's best biography. Gregorio did not compile his poetry himself and, because of this, once we lack chronology, the critical study of the life and works of the Poet results in being difficult. Thus Gregorio's poems were collected in apocryphal writings and codices afterwards. They also had poems alien to the Gregorian muse and were attributed to him. Amongst the best and most complete codices, it is worth mentioning the ones by the National Library, by Varnhagen in Itamaraty's Palace and the Asensio-Cunha codex, which served as a basis to Gregorio de Matos's poetry edition carried out by James Amado in 1968, perhaps the best codex on Gregorio. The Brazilian Academy [of Letters] decided to undertake the publication of the Poet's complete works and, by compiling the apocryphal writings that are extant in these collections, distributed Gregorio's poetical production in five volumes: I. Sacral [Poetry], released in 1929; II. Lyrical [Poetry], in 1923; III. Gracious [Poetry]; IV. Satirical [Poetry]; V. Satirical [Poetry], these three latter in 1930. Shortly after, Dr. Afrânio Peixoto, in an auction in Lisbon, purchased two magnificent codices that he destined to the National Library. The 2nd codex, with 819 pages, is the richest with the Poet's compositions. It is surprising that other codices are still extant. Afrânio Peixoto published in 1933, on the occasion of the Poet's centenary, the 6th volume of the Gregorian works, with the title of Last [Poetry], a compilation of poems that he found in the aforementioned purchased codex and that were not included in the previously known collections. [...] In Sao Paulo's City Library, there is one typewritten copy of Gregorio's pornographic verses with the title Gregorio de Matos' Sotadical Satires (869.9711, G1). From the Erotic [Poetry], there are two typewritten codices, one in the Brazilian Academy of Letters and the other in the National Library, both of which were organized by Afrânio Peixoto. [...] Eugênio Gomes (in the Correio de Manhã, December 17th 1955, later republished in Visões and Revisões, Rio de Janeiro, INL, 1958, pp.18-28) added, to Gregorio de Matos's works, three sonnets, of known authorship, in the Reborn Phoenix, making evident the copyists' responsibility, be them contemporary or not, out of unscrupulousness, inattention or of ill-directed zeal, for including many poems of diverse origin thar circulated orally amongst the people in the codices.15

Such excerpts refer to three representations of the figure of the historical-literary character Gregorio de Matos, extracted from three different sources: two textbooks and one scholarly source. This is so because there is an intimate dependency between the schooling of Gregorio de Matos and the scholarly practices that configured him as an author of books, works of art, as a poet, as Brazilian Literature, etc., from which the subjective-authorial presence stabilized by school practices emerge.

In the following table, excerpts from the corpus are organized according to three representational constants, which will be commented on afterwards.

The excerpts extracted from Tables 1, 2 and 3, which are significant to the constitution of a certain Gregorio de Matos, have been grouped in Table 4 according to three representational constants: "Biographical individuality," "Agentivity," and "Interiority."

Table 4
Representational Constants of the Corpus [italicized by the author, for emphasis]

Biographical individuality	Agentivity	Interiority
"Gregorio de Matos had a solid educational background"	"In his works he followed the teachings of these literature masters"	"The vehemence with which he criticizes his contemporaries renders him the nickname 'Hellmouth'"
"As a Law Student in Coimbra, he got in touch with the humanist perspective [...]"	"He became renowned for his lyrical, satirical and sacral poetry"	"Gregorio de Matos was given the nickname that very clearly expresses his way of acting and of seeing the world: 'The Hellmouth'"
"causing him to be exiled to Angola in 1694"	"[...] the satirical poems were the ones that made him famous; because of them he received the name Hellmouth"	"[...] because he led a 'non-Christian' life"
"[...] this would lead him to be exiled from his home land"	"[...] the Bahian poet denounced the corruption [...]"	"The poet had good friends in the metropolis"
"[...] he studied Law in Coimbra"	"In Brazil, Gregorio de Matos will find the most powerful weapon [...] in his satire"	"A debauched but good trickster [...]"
"[he] was born in December 1633 [...]"	"[...] the poet will ridicule the corrupt politicians who governed Bahia"	"[...] we can observe the typically Baroque man in him"
"Considered the first great Brazilian poet [...]"	"[he] studied at a Jesuit school in Salvador, Bahia"
"Gregorio de Matos was known for his satirical poetry"	"He majored in 1661."
"After working as a judge and attorney in Lisbon, he returned to Brazil in 1682 to work as a court judge in the Ecclesiastical Relation and as a Paymaster	"he went to Lisbon and then to Coimbra, where he studied Canonical Law"
General at Sé Church, [...]"
"[...] two years later, he was deposed from his position [...]"	"Gregorio did not compile his poetry himself [...]"
"The most important poet to the Baroque in Brazil [...]"	"At the end of 1680s, he became involved in an inquisitorial trial"
"having stayed there [in Recife] until his demise at the age of 59"	"he bothered so many powerful men in Bahia with his teasing poems"
"[...] with his brother Eusébio de Matos [...]"	"He returned from 'exile' in the following year and once again was involved in troubles"
"His family was big and powerful and his ancestors had come from Portugal. Here, they became landowners, plantation owners [...]"	"[...] his friends thought it would be better to send him to Angola so that he could be safe"

"Biographical individuality" implies linguistic choices that establish a human form with a body ending at the skin (HARAWAY, 2000), of "juste un individu" (GODARD, 2014): a life bodily-socially pervaded by formative, affective experiences that are typical of the modern, bourgeois, Romantic individual. To this effect, descriptions and dates of birth, of life hallmarks, graduation, professional achievements, exile, death, among others, are mobilized.

The second constant of "Agentivity" is organized through special emphasis on verbs and on the figure of Gregorio de Matos in relation to these verbal structures: Gregorio de Matos follows teachings, becomes famous, denounces evils, finds means of self-expression, ridicules people, studies, finishes his studies, goes to Coimbra, compiles verses, get involved in the Inquisition, bothers the powerful, returns from exile, protects himself and is protected, etc. In this way, conditioned by verbal-linguistic resources entailing discursive, textual implications, Gregorio de Matos's authoriality is composed by concrete "data," via a configuration of personhood with acting-in-the-world. Gregorio de Matos is either the grammatical subject of sentences or the nucleus of semantema laden with agentivity, heroicity, and responsibilization.

The third constant of "Interiority," of a psychologizing character, brings evidence of Gregorio de Matos's psy anatomy - temper, worldview, feelings; that is, a technique of the self, "understood in the sense in which the relation to oneself assumes an independent status. It is as if the relations of the outside folded back to create a doubling, allowing a relation to oneself to emerge, and constituting an inside which is hollowed out and develops its own unique dimension" (DELEUZE, 1988, p.100).¹⁶

Therefore, the three constants, combined together, are not merely a way of situating the reader in the biography of the individual Gregorio de Matos, but they are the very elaboration of a uniform, coherent figure of Gregorio de Matos as an anthropomorphic literary celebrity, gifted with desire and power of acting in the world. Even if one could assert that the texts on Table 1 and Table 2 seek tracing a panorama by means of narrating the authorial literary figure, the three representational constants end up building Gregorio de Matos precisely as an individual by the necessary nexus between Understanding-the-History-of-Literature and Describing-Literary-Authors.

Tables 1 and 2 converge into the construction of a biography of Gregorio de Matos that overrides any difficulty of a "critical study of the life and works of the Poet," creating an effect of descriptive infallibility. What stands out in the reading of Tables 1 and 2 is the recognition of the work as necessarily and inevitably coming from a person with personality, a professional pathway, family, friends, etc., a person out of whom the works stem, which makes such reasoning adequate to the schooling steps of Gregorio de Matos. Namely, the understanding of the constitution of a work qua work leads to an attribution blistered with individualizing characteristics so as to justify a comprehensible relationship and logic between work-author and author-work, dismissing, thus, the constitutive processes of the 17th century Baroque poetry.

In a close reading of Table 3, we must admit that, even though Spina seeks shedding light to a certain Gregorio de Matos who might be problematic in relation to his authorship, there is still indistinctness between authorship, literature and individuality as the criteria of cognoscibility of literary knowledge. It is important to stress out that Spina, even if he refrained from rushing into unifying the work and defining the essential elements to a philological critique, he does not discard, in his editorial prose, the image of Gregorio de Matos extant in the other texts, in which there is an author, an individual, an agent, a human being.

The collective, anonymous importance, which would have been proper to Baroque poetics (HANSEN, 1989), gives place to individual importance because of the individual, that is, because he is configured according to his own personal limits, personal acts, personal speech, personal legacy, etc., which stem from and return to his own personal life. The way we understands personal life is a structure of Gregorio de Matos's authoriality as one knows "him." The authoriality of his speech, acts and presence in the world comes from his poet figure as a representation pattern of types of agency and types of speech that can turn this "source" or "principle" of action into certain types of reception tactics, in the field of agency and narrative, which reframe these patterns always according to individuality, agentivity, and interiority.

Based on such considerations, the article moves on to the analysis of the conditions of possibility of these representational patterns in the figure of Gregorio de Matos; mutatis mutandis, we will deal with the tactics of this order of discourse that finds or, better yet, founds Gregorio de Matos.

3 Discursive Implications of the Corpus

It is a fact worth noticing that Table 3 anthologizes the individuality of Gregorio de Matos because the sources to Gregorio de Matos's works are narrowed in Spina and in the works of the Brazilian Academy of Letters in the mid-1930s and 1940s: the bibliographical references in Wisnik's book (2010), quoted as a bibliographical reference to Abaurre and Pontara's textbook (2010), as far as the poems of Gregorio de Matos are concerned, resumes, in an authorizing fashion, this tradition of representing Gregorio de Matos heavily based on Segismundo Spina's anthology.

In this sense, such summary (Table 3) proposed by Spina in the bibliography session of his anthology of Gregorio de Matos's poetry is an important node to address the discursive implications of the corpus. The first reason is that this summary works on the discursivity of the history (of an individual, as well as of literature, and even of History itself) as a sequence of events, such events being the processes of reappropriation of the Gregorian works, which means a linear history and a history of discoveries of knowledge. The second reason is that that summary works on the visualization of Gregorio de Matos as an authorial-personal figure, narrated according to an authoriality-subjectivity. However, neither the summary, nor Spina himself raise attention to the historicity of the very gaze with which Gregorio de Matos had been recollected. All this supports a verediction of Spina's summary, which sounds very familiar, therefore true, with the historical effect of it-has-been-thus and the normalizing effect of it-is-thus.

This double forging of the Gregorian figure around the historical effect and the normalization of the Poet's authorial, subject-like figure populates scholarly books on the History of Brazilian Literature, being them, for example, books by Brayner (Org.) (1981), Bosi (1976), Veríssimo (1998), Roméro (1902), Roncari (1999), Sodré (2004), Merquior (1996) and Carvalho (1943). These books, whose potency of circulation is found in the relation of (in)formation articulated with these histories, is grounded in the bibliographical authorization that each book operates. And amongst all of them there is a common stemmatic of books, all crafted in the 20th century, which, in their turn, are authorized by other books crafted in the mid-19th century. These networks of authorization of the Gregorian works are established by the most frequently referred books regarding Gregorio de Matos, still from the 20th century. According to Hansen's (1989) comments on the 19th century editors, they only rely on Cunha Barbosa's 19th century reedition of the 18th century book A vida do excelente poeta lírico, o doutor Gregorio de Matos e Guerra [The Life of the excellent lyrical poet, the doctor Gregorio de Matos e Guerra], written by the licensee Manuel Pereira Rabelo, who also edited poems circulating in the 18th century under the label of "Gregorio de Matos."

To such a constellation of books from the 19th and 20th century, the book form is obvious as a criterion of the possibility that such a thing as Gregorio de Matos existed. The function of the authorial and personal signature is associated to the book form. The function of the authorial, personal signature is coupled to a series of stories in which Gregorio de Matos is read as a subject, in a human form, dear to the recollection gaze that founds the recollected object. In these operations, there is a kind of historical genesis of the literary, the author and his works.

There are some sine qua non conditions for the constitution of this historical, authorial, literary truth around Gregorio de Matos, which is based on the following operations. First operation:

A vida do excelente poeta lírico, o doutor Gregorio de Matos e Guerra [The Life of the excellent lyrical poet, the doctor Gregorio de Matos e Guerra] has been taken - after its publication by the canon Januário da Cunha Barbosa, 1841 - as a discourse external to the act that produced it. Times were romantic and fiction was not read as fiction. The rhetoric topics of the encumber genre "life" were petrified as life, and the burden of life expelled, as living, the verisimilar as sense. Rabelo's text was not, thus, read following the specificity of Baroque interpretation (HANSEN, 1989, p.17).¹⁷

The second operation, implied by the first one, has to do with the unavailability of the Romantic discourses to operate with the understanding that "17th century Baroque poetry is a style, in the strong sense of the word, a stereotyped language of anonymous rhetoric-poetic common-places and distributed in genres and sub-styles (HANSEN, 1989, p.16)."¹⁸

The third operation is resumptive of the first ones from the standpoint that it (re)collects and (re)creates Gregorio de Matos:

In this case authorship is produced by the unification that becomes productive a posteriori: "Gregorio de Matos" is a label, an imaginary and changing unit in the discourses that contradictorily compose him in an aesthetic hierarchy, determined by the "reception chain," according to Jauss's expression. Not-substantial, he is an effect of the reading of the attributed poems, not its cause (HANSEN, 1989, p.15).¹⁷

Such pragmatic conditions of reception from readers and editors in the 19th and 20th centuries, constituting themselves as the cause and effect of a short-circuit of the epistemic gaze, have to do with the philological attitude of these centuries. Well, why are the Gregorian works not edited without hesitating to identify them as biography, as literature, as politics, so that Gregorio de Matos becomes Gregorio de Matos as 1) individual; 2) author, and 3) anti-slavery, scathing critic, libertarian, quasi-militant, quasi-activist, as he happens to be narrated in textbooks, scholarly histories of literature, literary imaginaires, teaching scenes, etc.? That is because this philological attitude - almost a causal condition, albeit historically contingent of the literary practices - used to take place in practices through which:

[the] 19th century philologists [...] sought to gather the greatest number of documents concerning the life of the poet, besides collecting his work. [...] This erudite apparatus of notes and references was the condition to state [...] that the historical account could retell and prove through the exhaustion of the documental survey and its treatment and interpretation (HANSEN; MOREIRA, 2013, p.16).²⁰

Wherefore, having done that, finally "[the] text established by the philological critique [would aim at] abolishing any doubt around the fact that the words of the poem were the same as those effectively wished and expressed by the author" (HANSEN; MOREIRA, 2013, p.17).²¹

In order to conclude, it would be proper to tie what has been said about the corpus to the chosen theoretical-methodological operators. Concerning the reversal principle, Gregorio de Matos would not be a luminous and emanatory point or a source of literary nexus with political and critical aspects. As an author, "he" is a projectile of a certain project of a certain will to study, to know. Thus, to figure him implies discontinuing him, rarefying him, once he only exists in a certain epistemic regime with its ontological capacities, that is, with its capacities of founding worlds and impressions. This leads to the specificity and externality of Gregorio de Matos's case: this literary figure is only locally possible, even though his internal discursive conditions intend to be infallible not only in his possibility, but also in his reality ipso facto. Paradoxically, it would be possible to say that Gregorio de Matos exists in absolute if taken as a point exterior to his existentiality, that is, if relativized in his existentiality as existent-from-a-standpoint: therefore, Gregorio de Matos, externally to his foundation discourses, does not exist; however, from the interior of his discursive conditions of existence, he does.

To this paper Gregorio de Matos is figured as verisimilar and not verisimilar at the same time.

Conclusion

Representational moves on Gregorio de Matos's assumed and, eventually, actualized life and works have been narrated in this article. Such moves dismissed editorial (re)signifying processes, to which editorial (re)signifying accounts - Hansen's (1989) and Hansen and Moreira's (2013) - were opposed and through which a double authorial truth for the Baroque poet was figured. Therefore, there is an opposition of two epistemic paths: one that would overshadow the truth politics of discursive artifices known as history, time, literature, etc., and the other that would magnetize any process of textual constitution along with the constitutive conditions of the text, its cultural and historical circumstances, its truth poetics (creation) and truth politics (circulation).

A discourse analysis of such a phenomenon as Gregorio de Matos, by the operations performed herein, leads to a conclusion that is not only related to the analyzed objects, always kept outside the analysis: it leads, above all, to methods, to paths to an analysis of representations. In a sense, an analysis of the discursive representations of Gregorio de Matos leads to an outcome of some kind of research pathos which figures the relationship between knowledge and knowing objects - the representations - as constant inventions (FOUCAULT, 2001) and refractions (HARAWAY, 1994): foundations, not findings. This confers on the article a research ethos - that is, a methodos - to which

reading and writing procedures belonging to Greek-Western History of Philosophy will not be used, be them monographic or doxographic, be them those that establish a duality between repressive cause and repressed desire, or the ones that forecast a relationship between a deforming representant and a deformed represented (CORAZZA, 2008, p.69).²²

Hereupon we shall point to an analysis of representations in which "representation" neither performs the objectual distance that makes the representational knowledge possible nor implies the summoning of authors, texts, histories, themes or books, but "unformed matter and anonymous forces, particles and diagrams, haecceties and phylum, by which content and expression strata are formed" (2008, p.69).²³

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• _______ A verdade e as formas jurídicas Trad. Roberto C. M. Machado e Eduardo J. Morais. Rio de Janeiro: NAU Editora, 2002.
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• _______ "Manifesto ciborgue: ciência, tecnologia e feminismo-socialista no final do século XX". In: SILVA, T. T. da (org.). Antropologia do ciborgue. As vertigens do pós-humano Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2000.
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• RONCARI, L. Literatura Brasileira: Dos Primeiros Cronistas aos Últimos Românticos. São Paulo: Edusp, 1999.
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• SILVA, T. T. da. O adeus às metarranativas educacionais. In: _______. (org.). O sujeito na educação: estudos foucaultianos Petrópolis: Vozes, p.247-258, 1994.
• SODRÉ, N. W. História da Literatura Brasileira Rio de Janeiro: Graphia, 2004.
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• VAN DIJK, T. Análise crítica do discurso. In: _______. Discurso e poder Organizado por Karina Falcone e Judith Hoffnagel. São Paulo: Contexto, 2015, p.113-132.
• VERÍSSIMO, J. História da Literatura Brasileira São Paulo: Letras & Letras, 1998.
• WISNIK, J. M. (org.) Poemas escolhidos de Gregório de Matos São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2010, p.70-71.

• 1
  TN. In order to make explicit the difference the author makes between significado and sentido, we will use 'meaning' for significado e 'sense' (contextual meaning) for sentido.
• 2
  FOUCAULT, M. The Order of Discourse. In: YOUNG, R. Untying the text. A Post-Structuralist Reader. Boston, London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, pp.48-78
• 3
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 4
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 5
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 6
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 7
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 8
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 9
  Text in Portuguese: "a partir da diversidade e da dispersão, do acaso dos começos e dos acidentes."
• 10
  Text in Portuguese: "não busca somente no passado a marca de acontecimentos singulares, mas ela se coloca hoje a questão da possibilidade dos acontecimentos: 'ela deduzirá da contingência que nos fez ser o que somos, a possibilidade de não mais ser, fazer ou pensar o que somos, fazemos ou pensamos.'"
• 11
  Text in Portuguese: "não às proposições verdadeiras, mas ao conjunto de regras que torna possível proferir e acatar as convenções tidas como verdadeiras em determinado momento."
• 12
  Text in Portuguese: "Gregório de Matos: o primeiro grande poeta brasileiro. Gregório de Matos teve sólida formação cultural. Estudante de Direito em Coimbra, lá entrou em contato com a perspectiva humanista que incentivava a leitura dos autores clássicos. Ele seguiu os ensinamentos aprendidos com esses mestres literários em sua obra. Tornou-se conhecido por sua poesia lírica, sacra e satírica. Foram os poemas satíricos que deram fama ao poeta baiano, chegando mesmo a causar o seu degredo para Angola, em 1694.Neste capítulo, você viu que, embora sua obra lírica e sacra seja extensa, foram os poemas satíricos que deram grande fama a Gregório de Matos, valendo-lhe inclusive o apelido de Boca do Inferno. Em seus textos, por meio de um olhar extremamente crítico, o poeta baiano denunciou a corrupção dos políticos e a devassidão moral que via em alguns representantes do poder em sua época. Embora escritas em fins do século XVII, as críticas em verso do poeta continuam atuais. Para compreender melhor a atualidade dos poemas satíricos de Gregório de Matos, propomos que você selecione alguns versos que possam servir de legenda para imagens atuais ou como uma espécie de "síntese satírica" de notícias de nossa época. [...] Gregório de Matos e o retrato crítico da Bahia. No Brasil, Gregório de Matos encontrará na sátira a arma mais poderosa para criticar o cenário político de sua época. Seguindo os passos de Juvenal, o poeta vai ridicularizar os políticos corruptos que governam a Bahia de forma tão debochada que isso lhe valerá também o desterro de sua terra natal. Observe, no trecho abaixo, como ele critica a falta de princípios dos políticos de sua cidade. [...] na política de estado / nunca houve princípios certos, [...] Eia! Estamos na Bahia, / onde agrada a adulação, / onde a verdade é baldão, / e a virtude hipocrisia: / sigamos esta harmonia / de tão fátua consonância, / e indo que seja ignorância / seguir erros conhecidos, / sejam-me a mim permitidos, / se em ser besta está a ganância."
• Text in Portuguese: "O Barroco no Brasil /Gregório de Matos / Considerado o primeiro grande poeta brasileiro, estudou direito em Coimbra, onde pôde ler muitos autores clássicos, que influenciaram sua poesia. A poesia de Gregório de Matos é geralmente dividida em lírica, sacra e satírica. → Na poesia lírica, ele retoma temas clássicos e privilegia o desenvolvimento de um raciocínio exemplar. Veja um exemplo da poesia lírica de Gregório de Matos. [exemplo longo suprimido de poema do mesmo livro de Wisnik citado à esquerda] → Na poesia sacra, são temas comuns o senso de pecado, a ideia da fragilidade humana e o medo da morte e da condenação eterna. O poema 'Achando-se um braço perdido do Menino Deus...', já apresentado, é um exemplo da poesia sacra de Gregório de Matos. → Gregório de Matos ficou conhecido por sua poesia satírica. Nela, retrata os aspectos negativos da sociedade em que vive. A veemência com que critica seus contemporâneos lhe rende o apelido de 'Boca do Inferno'. Veja um exemplo de sua poesia satírica. [outro exemplo longo suprimido de poema do mesmo livro de Wisnik citado à esquerda]."
• Text in Portuguese: "Gregório de Matos, o 'Boca do Inferno'/ O poeta mais importante do Barroco do Brasil nasceu em dezembro de 1633 e estudou no colégio dos Jesuítas de Salvador na Bahia. Em 1650, com o irmão Eusébio de Matos, seguiu para Lisboa e, posteriormente, para Coimbra, onde estudou Direito Canônico. Dali, saiu graduado em 1661. Muitos anos depois, Gregório de Matos Guerra ganhou um apelido que explica bem sua maneira de agir e observar o mundo: "O Boca do Inferno"; dele, surgiram as variantes de "O boca de pimenta-malagueta", "O boca de sal". Sua família era grande e poderosa e os antepassados tinham vindo de Portugal. Aqui, transformaram-se em latifundiários, senhores de engenho, criadores de gado, políticos. Depois de exercer o cargo de juiz e procurador da Bahia em Lisboa, retornou ao Brasil em 1682 para exercer as funções de desembargador da Relação Eclesiástica e tesoureiro-mor da Igreja da Sé, mas, dois anos depois, foi destituído do cargo porque levava a vida "sem modo cristão". No final da década de 1680, envolveu-se em um processo inquisitorial, mas tal procedimento não teve grandes proporções e sequer prosseguiu. É que o poeta tinha bons amigos na metrópole. Em 1694, incomodou tanto os poderosos da Bahia com seus poemas debochados, que os amigos houveram por bem enviá-lo para Angola, a fim de protegê-lo. Retornou do "exílio" no ano seguinte, envolvido mais uma vez em enrascadas. Teve de morar no Recife, lá permanecendo até sua morte, aos 59 anos. Um dissoluto, mas um bom malandro, pôde criticar seu tempo e ver disputadas as cópias feitas à mão de seus poemas; muitos deles eram decorados pelo povo, principalmente, é claro, os de modalidade satírica. [imagem do frontispício da obra de 1775 acerca de Gregório de Matos por Manuel Pereira Rebelo] Irritava-o os funcionários públicos corruptos, os "unhates" (comerciantes portugueses que extorquiam o dinheiro do povo com preços impraticáveis), e, sobretudo, os "caramurus" (brancos que tinham famílias ilustres e antigas que aqui chegaram no início da colonização e que, por isso mesmo, se julgavam os donos da terra). Seus poemas foram recolhidos ora pela polícia, ora por seu irmão Eusébio, só ganhando a primeira edição no século XX. A obra de Gregório de Matos Guerra pode ser dividida em: a) Satírica: por meio dela, Gregório satiriza todas as classes sociais, em especial o clero, as freiras, os "unhates" e "caramurus", os mulatos e as autoridades em geral. Às vezes o vocabulário é debochado, chulo. Usa africanismos e termos indígenas, pondo a nu as circunstâncias, acontecimentos e pessoas. [exemplos de poemas completos, sem referência bibliográfica] b) Lírica: levando-se em conta que poesia lírica é toda aquela que expressa sentimentos pessoais sobre alguma coisa, pessoa ou acontecimento, a lírica gregoriana pode ser dividida em: 1. Lírico-amorosa: a que ressalta o elogio ao ser amado. Em linguagem amável e equilibrada, usa geralmente o soneto como forma de expressão. [exemplos de poemas completos, sem referência bibliográfica] 2. Erótica, lírico-erótica ou erótico-irônica: nesse tipo de poema, somam-se sonetos a redondilhos, com termos chulos, linguagem ambígua e trocadilhos. [exemplos de poemas completos, sem referência bibliográfica] [nota lateral] SAIBA MAIS: Na lírica gregoriana, a amorosa, geralmente sob a forma de soneto, é feita para as mulheres brancas; a erótica, normalmente sob a forma de redondilhos, é dirigida às negras e mulatas. 3. Religiosa (sacra): corresponde à fase final dos poemas gregorianos. É exatamente com ela, ou por meio dela, que se pode observar nele o homem tipicamente barroco. Os duelos entre pecado e perdão, salvação e inferno aparecem de maneira notadamente destacada. [exemplos de poemas completos, sem referência bibliográfica] [questões de vestibulares anteriores ao ano de 2015 sobre o tema tratado]."
• 15
  Text in Portuguese: "As poesias de Gregório corriam em manuscrito de mão em mão, e o governador da Bahia, dom João de Alencastro, que tanto admirava "as valentias dessa musa", coligia os versos de Gregório e os fazia transcrever em livros especiais, além das cópias de seus admiradores, entre os quais o licenciado Manuel Pereira Rabelo, que também legou à posteridade a melhor biografia do Poeta. Gregório não compilou os versos, razão por que se torna difícil, à falta de cronologia, o estudo crítico da obra e da vida do Poeta. E assim foram sendo reunidas as poesias de Gregório, e aparecendo depois apógrafos e códices, que traziam também poemas alheios à musa gregoriana e atribuídos a ele. Entre os melhores códices e os mais completos, destacam-se o da Biblioteca Nacional, o de Varnhagen no Palácio Itamarati e o códice Asensio-Cunha, que serviu de base para a edição das poesias de Gregório realizada por James Amado em 1968, talvez o melhor códice de Gregório. A academia Brasileira resolveu empreender a publicação das obras completas do Poeta e, recenseando os apógrafos que constam nessas coleções, distribuiu a produção poética de Gregório em cinco volumes: I. Sacra, aparecido em 1929; II. Lírica, em 1923; III. Graciosa; IV. Satírica; V. Satírica, estes três últimos de 1930. O dr. Afrânio Peixoto adquire pouco depois, num leilão realizado em Lisboa, dois magníficos códices que destinou à Bilbioteca Nacional. O 2° códice, com 819 páginas, é o mais rico em composições do Poeta. Não é de estranhar que outros códices existam ainda. Afrânio Peixoto publica, então, em 1933, por ocasião do centenário do Poeta, o 6° volume da obra gregoriana, com o título de Última, compilação de poesias que encontrou nos referidos códices rematados, e que não constavam nas demais coleções conhecidas. [...] Na Biblioteca Municipal de São Paulo há uma cópia datilografada dos versos pornográficos de Gregório, com o título Satyras Sotádicas de Gregório de Matos (869.9711, G1). Da Erótica, há dois códices datilografados, um na Academia Brasileira de Letras, outro na Biblioteca Nacional, ambos organizados por Afrânio Peixoto. [...] Assinalou Eugênio Gomes (no Correio da Manhã, 17 dez. 1955, posteriormente republicado em Visões e Revisões, Rio de Janeiro, INL, 1958, pp.18-28), na obra de Gregório de Matos três sonetos, de autoria conhecida, a Fênix Renascida, o que evidencia a responsabilidade dos copistas, contemporâneos ou não, que incluíam nos códices, por inescrúpulo, inadvertência ou zelo mal dirigido, muita poesia de procedência diversa que circulava oralmente entre o povo."
• 16
  DELEUZE, G. Foucault. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1988.
• 17
  Text in Portuguese: "A Vida do excelente poeta lírico, o doutor Gregório de Matos e Guerra passou a ser tomada, com sua publicação pelo cônego Januário da Cunha Barbosa em 1841, como um discurso fora do ato que o produziu. Os tempos eram românticos e a ficção não foi lida como ficção. As tópicas retóricas do gênero encomiástico "vida" petrificaram-se como vida e o peso da vida expeliu, como vivido, o verossímil como sentido. O texto de Rabelo não foi lido, pois, segundo a especificidade da interpretação barroca."
• 18
  Text in Portuguese: "[a] poesia barroca do século XVII é um estilo, no sentido forte do termo, linguagem estereotipada de lugares-comuns retórico-poéticos anônimos e repartidos em gêneros e subestilos."
• 19
  Text in Portuguese: "A autoria, no caso, é produzida pela unificação que se torna produtiva a posteriori: "Gregório de Matos" é uma etiqueta, unidade imaginária e cambiante nos discursos que o compõem contraditoriamente numa hierarquia estética, determinada pela "cadeia de recepções" na expressão de Jauss. Não-substancial, é efeito da leitura dos poemas atribuídos, não sua causa."
• 20
  Text in Portuguese: "[os] filólogos do século XIX [...] buscavam reunir o maior número possível de documentos concernentes à vida do poeta, além de coligir sua obra. [...] Esse aparato erudito de notas e referências era condição para que se pudesse afirmar [...] que a narrativa histórica recontava, ao mesmo tempo que provava, pela exaustão do levantamento documental e seu tratamento e interpretação."
• 21
  Text in Portuguese: "[o] texto estabelecido pela crítica filológica [visasse] abolir qualquer dúvida quanto ao fato de as palavras do poema serem as que foram efetivamente desejadas e expressas pelo autor"
• 22
  Text in Portuguese: "não serão usados quaisquer procedimentos de leitura e de escrita integrantes da história da filosofia greco-ocidental, sejam monográficos ou doxográficos, sejam os que estabelecem uma dualidade entre causa repressora e desejo reprimido, ou que prevêem uma relação entre representante deformador e representado deformado."
• 23
  Text in Portuguese: "matéria informada e forças anônimas, partículas e diagramas, hecceidades e phylum, com os quais os estratos de conteúdo e expressão são formados."

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  May-Aug 2017

History

• Received
  07 Aug 2016
• Accepted
  01 Mar 2017