Discursos sobre o mundo dos engenhos: uma leitura das obras de Antonil e Mário Sette

Abstract

The world of sugar plantation in Brazil, since the conquest and colonization, has been built as a favored subject of European speeches, as per example the 1500-s chronicles of European travelers and settlers, besides the innumerous mentions contained in the Jesuitic Letters, especially those from José de Anchieta and Manuel da Nóbrega, obtaining, in 1711, an enormous visibility with the work Culture and opulence of Brazil, from Father Antonil. Among the most varied speeches of colonial phase, the subject of the Portuguese sugar enterprise in Brazil would surpass the texts from periods after our autonomy, guaranteeing its frequency as much in literary speech as in essayistic and sociological speeches. In the beginning of 20th century, this subject would be retaken as central by the Pernambucan Mário Sette, with the work Sugar plantation lady. The publication of this novelistic speech, in 1921, would make Mário Sette the precursor of Modern School in Northeast and Northeastern Regionalism of 20th century and, consequently, a forerunner of the essayistic speeches of Gilberto Freyre and the novelistic narratives of José Américo de Almeida and José Lins do Rego, literary icons of Northeastern Modernism. Far from losing strength as speech motivation, the sugar society would be retaken as novelistic speech at the end of 20th century with the publication of the work Bonfire of memory, from Francisco Dantas, published in 1991. Knowing the importance of the sugar universe in our several cultural speeches, we undertook a comparative reading between the works Culture and opulence of Brazil, from Father Antonil, and Sugar plantation lady, from Mário Sette, seeking to observe the representative traits that informam and enformam these speeches about the world of sugar plantation in Brazil. To achieve our purpose we take refuge with an interdisciplinary theoretical-methodological approach, more precisely in the basis of Integral Critic outlined by the Brazilian critic Antonio Candido since the beginning of the second period of last century.