In the romantic writing of Maria Firmina dos Reis, the beginning of a black brazilian feminism

Abstract

The article focuses on the work of Maria Firmina dos Reis in the context of the diffusion of romantic aesthetics in Brazil Empire, a movement that integrates and initiates the project of founding a national literature. It highlights in the argumentative speech in favor of such a proposal, as well as among pre-textual and textual elements of the novel Úrsula, by Reis, probable reasons why his work was excluded from the official documents that legitimize a Brazilian national canon. To this end, it includes the expressive, mimetic, objective and pragmatic approaches to the text, according to the description of literary communication formulated by M. H. Abrams (2005); reviews notions about the historiography of Brazilian literature formulated by Cândido (2000), Lajolo (1994) and Coutinho (1969) and, in conclusion, highlights in González (2020) and Lorde (2019) topics of feminist and anti-racist discourse of which Maria Firmina dos Reis emerges as a precursor.