Abstract

BOTELHO, André. The Small history of Brazilian literature: provoking modernism. Tempo soc. [online]. 2011, vol.23, n.2, pp. 135-161. ISSN 0103-2070.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0103-20702011000200006.

The text analyzes the Small history of Brazilian literature, by Ronald de Carvalho, looking to explicate its intellectual context: on one hand, the tradition of literary historiography from which the book inherits its main references and conventions; on the other, the contemporary critical reflection on the direction in which Brazilian culture and society were heading and on which the modernist sensibility and imagination fed. This methodological strategy enables a discussion in how, based on the defence of the "simplicity" of literary language - whose particular meaning is also described in this article - the book contributed to making an agenda of aesthetic and cultural renewal routine

Keywords : Modernism; Literary historiography; Aesthetic renewal; National construction; Culture and society in Brazil.