A "lúbrica estrutura”: a construção da sensualidade em “Hespérides”, de Carvalho Júnior

Abstract

In this dissertation, we analyze the sensuality in the set of poems “Hespérides”, by the Brazilian poet Francisco Antonio de Carvalho Junior. We inves-tigate which literary, historic and philosophical factors, besides the so-called influ-ence of Baudelaire, once assimilated by the author, would have contributed to the formation of that sensuality. The starting point is a review of all Carvalho Junior’s critical acclaim, in which we expose the construction of the image and of the common places related to the author and his work, which are condensed in the idea of a poet who has died young and has left a collection of sensual and violent verses. This reading – whose germ is in “A nova geração”, by Machado de Assis, and has been largely reinforced by “Os primeiros baudelairianos”, by Antonio Candido – still holds on today in everything produced about Carvalho Junior. Our analysis, although indebted to the same authors, seeks to get rid of certain limitations imposed by them (such as the Baudelaire’s overestimated interference), which are harmful to the complexity of “Hespérides”. On the other hand, we offer new or, at least, deconstructed reading possibilities, which are condensed on two chapters: “The philosophy and the boudoir” and “The man and the woman”. In the former, we investigate the different nineteenth-century trends and fashions present in “Hespérides”, as well as the construction of the notion of privacy and of a place for sensuality within the same work, which is the boudoir. In the latter, we analyze the characterizations of male and female characters, dissecting the type of relationship established between both of them, a violent and materialistic one. The corpus is the first edition of Parisina (1879), which collects all the known work of Carvalho Junior.