Towards Research on the History of Literary Criticism in Brazil: Convergence and Dispersion of a Debate Through Time

Abstract

This article proposes a historical reading of Brazilian literary criticism in its articulation with the construction of the idea of nationality, examining how different critical schools and institutions have disputed, over time, the definition of Brazilian literature and the reading regimes considered suitable for it. It aims to understand the body of texts from the foundational period of Brazilian literature – which coincides with the emergence of the modern notion of criticism in the 19th century – up to the present, grouping them into six paradigmatic moments, characterized by production within specific institutions or by tensions among them, in order to understand the transformations of a debate over time.