Gendered Memories of Plantation Life: Teresa De La Parra's" Las memorias de Mamá Blanca" and José Lins do Rego's" Menino de Engenho"
K Swarthout - Latin American Literary Review, 2007 - JSTOR
K Swarthout
Latin American Literary Review, 2007•JSTORThe advent of autobiographical fiction in the early 20th century marks a turning point in
development of self-representation in literature in which the" I" and the" I as object" diverge.
1 The philosophical basis for the separation is founded on the idea of the literary subject as
an ontological construct of the psy chological self, a premise that allows the writer greater
freedom in dramatizing the events of the past, in filling in the gaps, so to speak, of memories
faded or unconsciously repressed. Borrowing from both genres, the autobiography and the …
development of self-representation in literature in which the" I" and the" I as object" diverge.
1 The philosophical basis for the separation is founded on the idea of the literary subject as
an ontological construct of the psy chological self, a premise that allows the writer greater
freedom in dramatizing the events of the past, in filling in the gaps, so to speak, of memories
faded or unconsciously repressed. Borrowing from both genres, the autobiography and the …
The advent of autobiographical fiction in the early 20th century marks a turning point in development of self-representation in literature in which the" I" and the" I as object" diverge. 1 The philosophical basis for the separation is founded on the idea of the literary subject as an ontological construct of the psy chological self, a premise that allows the writer greater freedom in dramatizing the events of the past, in filling in the gaps, so to speak, of memories faded or unconsciously repressed. Borrowing from both genres, the autobiography and the novel, these texts at the same time diverge from both traditions. Although chronological narrative often persists as the ordering principle of the account, aesthetic autobiographies do not seek to faithfully reconstruct the biographical details of the writer's life. Rather, they allowed for an imaginative recreation of historical events based on willful omission of actual details in order to reveal a deeper, sentient truth.
Especially influential among the fictional autobiographies of the period are r? cits d'enfance. 2 These accounts constitute a special subgenre of self-re flexive literature whose focus is the childhood years. Thought to be a time of innocence in which the child subject possesses a unique sensibility, the early stage of development comprises the formative incidents that shape our mature lives? as Wordsworth aptly put it," the Child is the father of the Man." 3 The" epiphanies" of one's youth, almost certainly only distant recollections, more than attempting to be truthful, establish another (poetic) truth that reveals the struggles of the writer (and the reader) with the legacy of history for the present era. Rather than profiles on the subject of childhood psychological development, r? cits d'enfance are narratives about the self-realization of the adult writer (and the reading public), as they can provide a means for expunging guilt or offer a mythical refuge from the fragmented existence of modern life. The allegory of childhood was an especially poignant one for the vanguard ist r? cits d'enfance of Latin America, for these countries were in the infancy of modernization in the'20s and 430s. Julia Kushigian explores questions of
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