Escrita e experiência do cárcere em Lima Barreto e Graciliano Ramos

Abstract

This article promotes a confrontation between Lima Barreto’s O cemitério dos vivos and Graciliano Ramos’ Memórias do cárcere. We attempt to show that these works unify and oppose each other in ways that render their comparison productive. Despite referring to distinct periods in Brazilian history, O cemitério dos vivos and Memórias do cárcere reveal processes of de-personalization, of annihilation and restructuring of the self; they narrate the confrontation of their authors with certain disciplinary institutions (the prison and the asylum), and hence lend themselves to be read as testimonies of experiences of imprisonment. Both are works of great literary strength result from distinct labors of memory and are wrought with different critical forces. Our examination of these works privileges the cited problematiques, with the intent of analyzing the literary labor undertaken by Lima and Graciliano in order to convey a limit-event that refracts language.