Contemporary rereadings of the war of the farrapos in literature from Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

Our contribution aims to present reflections on the relationship between Literature and History in the light of contemporary rereadings of the War of the Farrapos in the literature of Rio Grande do Sul. In recent decades, with the so-called cultural “turn”, which also reached its theoretical foundations – if we think, with Hyden White and Sandra Jatahy Pesavento, in New History and, respectively, in New Cultural History –, History has been the object of reinterpretations fictions of the most varied events. As objects of analysis, we chose the novels Netto Perde sua Alma (2001), by Tabajara Ruas and A Casa das Sete Mulheres (2002), by Letícia Wierzchowski. The relationship between Literature and History allows us to glimpse constitutive aspects of the works in question, as it implies thinking about them in the confluence between the historical narrative and the fictional narrative from their basic structuring elements – time, space, narrator, character, etc. In terms of rereading, in the specific case of Guerra dos Farrapos, there is a shift in vision, for example, in Letícia Wierzchowski's novel, in which the war is glimpsed from the female gaze. The works of writer and filmmaker Tabajara Ruas integrate cinema influences in the way of narrating war scenes, in addition to the intense presence of the oneiric in the constitution of the plot and characters.