Brazilian Literature as World Literature by Eduardo F. Coutinho (review)

The eighth book in a series called "Literatures as World Literature," this volume is expansive and useful for its individual chapters in particular. Specialists in different periods and movements from Brazilian universities brandish their expertise to weigh in on issues such as outside influences and international reception, attitudes toward Brazil as a nation, and thoughts within Brazil about its regions and its indigenous cultures. Chronologically arranged, the chapter structure also focuses on genre.

Some readers might complain that the contemporary era and current forms are underrepresented, but a more important lack is coherence or idea of world literature. Each author either decides on their own or ignores the theme altogether and just provides a general analysis of their period, region, or movement. Many of these essays are wonderful and informative but most comparatists will shake their heads and ask why a few of these are included and some other topics are not.

Of course, in one sense isn't all literature in the world "world literature"? As comparatists, we know that advocating for comparative methodology or analyzing the importance of cross-cultural influences or international reception is not necessarily "writing about a national literature as world literature." An essay may simply be proposing the excellence of a certain national literature or its sophistication (as happens here several times). Even the introduction by the well-known scholar Eduardo Coutinho discusses each essay on its own terms rather than defining or describing the goals of the volume.

The existence of this book should still be welcomed by comparatists and others because the individual essays are significant original contributions to the criticism available in English on Brazilian literature. In this way, a generous reader will see this volume as disseminating Brazilian authors and texts into a world context rather than one taking stock of how, why, when, or where Brazilian literature has already succeeded in achieving international fame and readership.

The first few chapters on the colonial period suffer particularly from the lack of discussion of what world literature might mean for the colonizers and the colonized. Chapter 1 about the colonial period strives to prove the Brazilianness of early writers, several of whom were born in Portugal. Well-written and a good introduction to these writers, its conclusions seek to determine whether the writings are Brazilian or not in theme. In the same vein, chapter 2 about the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries primarily investigates the influence of European Enlightenment thinkers (Voltaire, Rousseau, and Kant), on Brazilians and Portuguese-born writers who lived primarily in Brazil.

In contrast, the essays on Jorge Amado and Clarice Lispector are the kind one might expect to find. Márcia Rios da Silva testifies to Amado's "position as the most-read or best-known writer in Brazil and the best-known Brazilian writer to the rest of the world" (199). She points out his pedagogical goals as a member of the Communist party and various other political allegiances, and the effect of his extensive travels and contacts throughout Spanish America on his fictions. Decades before postmodernism championed the incorporation of popular culture into significant literature, Amado was writing for the masses by making the impoverished classes his subject and at the same time, writing for the elites by touching on intellectual hotspots in a savvy fashion. Television and film versions of his works have entered into a mutually reinforcing system allowing his works to be known (though in distorted visual form) and then in the books themselves or in translation. Always more than a (Latin) American writer, Amado's legacy in Africa, the United States, Latin America, and Europe has only grown since his death.

Rita Terezinha Schmidt's chapter, "Crossing Borders: Clarice Lispector and the Scene of Transnational Feminist Criticism," accomplishes the important task of correcting the view espoused by Benjamin Moser that Clarice was an unknown internationally before he began writing about her and translating her. The story of Moser's attempts to co...