Cruz e Sousa: literatura e vida literária

Abstract

This research adresses the work of the poet João da Cruz e Sousa, published during his lifetime (1861 – 1898), and the literary environment at the turn of the century (19th – 20th) in Brazil, with a special focus on the events that occurred in the city of Desterro, in Santa Catarina, the poet’s birthplace, and in the city of Rio de Janeiro, capital of the First Republic, where the poet settled from 1890. It seeks to present, in a substantial way, the role of journalism in the propagation of ideas and the use of newspaper, by writers, as a means of guaranteeing notoriety and defining the canon, as well as highlighting the formation of ideologically aligned groups that would result in literary corporatism. It atributes the inauguration of the symbolist movement in Brazilian literature, by the poet João da Cruz e Sousa, to the tension between literature and literary life, by relating its foundations in the cultural context of the time, through research on nineteenth-century intellectuality by the perspective of history of literature