Balzac in Brazil: Alencar´s novel and the formation of the literary taste (19th century)

Abstract

After research conducted in in Scientific Initiation project carried out between 2014 and 2015, which started the study of the presence of Honoré de Balzac in Brazil in the nineteenth century, we note that the bookstore catalogs are privileged places for the study of literature circulation. During the research entitled "The B. L. Garnier Library and the Honoré de Balzac receiving in nineteenth-century in Brazil" - FAPESP 2014/05387-3 -, we seek to better understand how worked, in Brazil, the reception and appropriation processes of Balzac's literature, from B. L. Garnier publisher's books catalogs, in order to highlight the importance of the library with regard to cultural and literary dialogue established between Brazil and France during the nineteenth century. Now, this work of master, we intend to expanding the sources for research in catalogs of other libraries, namely, to the Garraux Library and Contemporary Library of Faro and Lino, we will pay attention to the movement of Balzac in newspapers, giving more attention to a specific type of ad we see on the focused journal: the announcement of literary works through auctions. Thus, from images of newspapers and catalogs, all acquired by FAPESP Thematic Project 2011/07342 - 9 "The transatlantic circulation of printed matter: the globalization of culture in the 19th century", which this study is linked, and, moreover, from the information available in the database under construction by Thematic Project, we will survey and analysis the list of Balzac's works published, announced and marketed in Portuguese and French, in Brazilian lands, in the nineteenth. Finally, through this work of collecting, storing and analyzing of data, interests us here to continue the study of "accommodation" (MEYER, 1996) of Balzac's literary ideas in Brazil. This will be done on the assumption that was José de Alencar, "our little Balzac" (CANDIDO, 1959, p. 231), who made here the main reception and dissemination of Balzac's work, mainly through its urban novels because the primary sources indicate, contrary to what has been stated, that during the nineteenth century coexisted various forms of reception of literary styles and ideas, such as the Balzac's novels in Brazil. So,ultimately, these sources tell us that not always public contact with European novels pre-existed the Brazilians writing, as stated by Schwarz (1977), and may have given in the case of the reading of novels already translated into Portuguese even after the existence of the Brazilian novel. Therefore, our ultimate goal is to highlight the importance of research in primary sources to better understand the modes of production, distribution and reception of literature, because knowing the backstage of the main bookstores and newspapers of the eighteenth in Brazil is seeking also to understand how it used to give and think the circulation of literature in the period (GRANJA, 2013), a movement that enters, in addition, the idea of formation of Brazilian literature (CANDIDO, 1959).