Dialogues in short prose: reflexes and reflections about Brazil in the literature of Cape Verde

Abstract

The relations between Cape Verde and Brazil, historically initiated in the 15th. century, became closer, from the literary point of view, in the late 1940's, with the rescue of Brazilian Regionalism of 1930 by the literary journal "Claridade". Being so, geographical and climatic features were a means of approximation between the two countries. In our initial project, "Atlantic crossings: the literature of Cape Verde reads Brazil", we found that the poetry genre seems to be frequently chosen by the Cape Verdean writers since the time of the journal "Claridade" until around 1975, the year of the Independence of Cape Verde. Justifying such phenomena, we believe that it is a result of the need of an early affirmation of a Cape Verdean identity: the poems, faster in their conception, are also easy to be published in newspapers and journals, what makes it possible to disseminate political, social or cultural thoughts. However, we have observed that it is through short prose (specially short stories and chronicles) that a great part of the cape Verdean writers more easily expose the daily life of their country, portray its problems and establish dialogues with Brazil and Brazilians, either via history, geography, music or literature. Therefore, in this project of Research Internship Abroad (BEPE),besides deepen our theoretical study about the theme of short prose (under the supervision of Professor António Manuel dos Santos Ferreira, PhD and the anchoring of the project at the University of Aveiro which are indispensable), also intends to collect Cape Verdean works at the Portuguese libraries which are not found in bookstores, or at the Cape Verdean National Library or The Historical National Archive, in order to finally map out to the extent in which Brazil is portrayed in Cape Verdean writers' imaginary in the short prose. (AU)