Mulheres que estão fazendo a nova literatura brasileira : perspectivas de rupturas e continuidades

Abstract

This research investigates how contemporary prose fiction written by women had articulated ruptures and continuities, both in the aesthetic and in the theme areas. For such, the following short stories anthologies were selected: 25 mulheres que estão fazendo a nova literatura brasileira (2004) and Mais 30 mulheres que estão fazendo a nova literatura brasileira (2005), both published by the Record publishing house and organized by Luiz Ruffato -, because it is a research subject with a representative number of women writers, something that can direct towards a range of perspectives. Firstly, a chart of the 55 women writers enlisted by the book was made with the purpose of situating the place of discourse by these women. In a second moment, there was the reading of the short stories, followed by the filling up of a questionnaire about the characters. Data was input in the Software Sphinx Survey and generated a set of statistical figures to be analyzed regarding the profile of the characters set in the books. Finally, some representative short stories from the set of themes addressed in the literature by female authorship and generally speaking in the contemporary fiction were analyzed in their internal structure, aiming at the comprehension of their liberating views and/ or reproductive views of the hegemonic values. The analysis was performed by using mainly the Feminine Criticism approach for its dislocation from essentialist approaches, thus contributing for the agency of women in the literary scene. Another approach performed was the Sociology of Literature for its theoretical contribution to the comprehension of the instances that make the literary circuit responsible for the exclusion of women from privileged spaces of expression. As a result, it was observed that although they present a predominantly elitist selection of women writers, both anthologies did not leave aside the situation of marginality occupied by women in the literary scene. Even though there is a trend of self representation by the women writers, which prevent plural social perspectives from being addressed, there is a diversity of daily experiences, including some of them that go beyond gender relationship, and that allow readings to be potential or effectively subversive of traditional hegemonic models.