Literary Archives and the Social History of Literature in Brazil: Anna Amélia Carneiro de Mendonça’s Papers

Abstract This article explores some potential uses of primary sources for the development of the social history of literature in Brazil, taking the personal documents of writer Anna Amélia Carneiro de Mendonça (1896-1971), a poet of Parnassian formation, as a case study. It argues that the description and analysis of the arrangement of this archive can foster a reassessment of the author’s place in national literary history and historiography. She is conceived of as a “mediator intellectual”, a literate from the economic elites, engaged not solely in poetic production, but also in a series of social endeavors and institutional practices that articulate politics, education, and the feminism of her time. This intricate interplay allows for a recalibration of the author’s public standing. A second central argument is that the modernist canon, progressively hegemonic throughout the 20th century, alienated her from the history and memory of literature by labelling her as a “pre-modernist” author. A transversal incursion into her collection allows us to observe relationships and interactions with modernist literati and artists. It simultaneously unveils her polymath nature, as an active writer who was not confined to Parnassianism, but also practiced a myriad of genres relegated to oblivion by the hegemony of criticism impacted by the advent of modernism. (AU)