Literary criticism: memories and images of the Brazilian literary regionalism

Abstract

This essay analyzes the presence and the persistence of a regionalist tradition in the Brazilian literature, drawing methodological connections between theoretical contributions from the studies on imaginary and collective memory and the ones consolidated by part of the national literary criticism. This paper intends to throw light on how the approach to the work of art and its judgment conveyed images that were accepted and apprehended by the collective memory, often becoming determining guidelines for reading, which undermined the legitimization of regionalism.