Visions of Modernity: The Brazilian Vanguard Text and the Search for a National Identity

By:
Patricia A. Soler
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This paper discusses publications produced by several Brazilian Modernist (or avant-garde) literary groups during the second decade of the twentieth-century. Inspired by the call for renewed forms of national expression, avant-garde novelists, poets, sculptors, painters, and architects united to challenge the conventional aesthetics of the art of the printed text. The focus of the paper concerns two of the most significant literary magazines produced during the 1920s, the first being of the more traditional sort and the second the publication that, inspired by European vanguard movements, incorporated local themes into expressions of a modern national identity. The paper analyzes the aesthetics of the Brazilian avant-garde and the relationship of image and text in the literary magazines Revista do Brasil and Klaxon. The paper also details European and American influences, particularly the Art Deco style, and their adaptation to local motifs. The paper concludes by discussing the ways in which the issues highlighted by the Brazilian vanguard publications are still of pressing issue today for the country, for the Latin American region, and for any country affected by the pressures to maintain a national identity in the face of globalization.


Keywords: Latin American literature, Brazilian literature, 20th century, Avant-garde aesthetics, Modernism, Art Deco, Primitivism
Stream: Books, Writing and Reading
Presentation Type: 30 minute Paper Presentation in English
Paper: Visions of Modernity

Patricia A. Soler

Ph.D. Candidate, Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Georgetown University
Washington, DC, USA

Patricia A. Soler is completing her dissertation on twentieth-century Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies at Georgetown University in Washington DC. Her current research focus explores the relationship between early twentieth-century Brazilian literature and art. She is also a Teaching Assistant of the Spanish and Portuguese languages and is the president of the graduate student association for her department. She will co-chair her department’s second annual graduate student conference, GRAPHSY (http://www8.georgetown.edu/departments/spanport/Graphsy/CallForPapers.htm), this fall.

Ref: B06P0190