Maura Lopes Cançado: considerations about the beginning of autobiographical feminine literature in Brazil

Abstract

The aim of this text is to problematize the feminine literature in Brazil, especially that of autobiographical perspective. This ‘style’ of writing in Maura L. Cançado shows us that, in this genre, there is a fusion between literature and the act of writing, a kind of strange murmur that it is not reduced to mere critical awareness. And it is by the writing of Hospício é deus – diário I (1965) and O sofredor do ver (1968) that the writer makes a consecration of the words and expresses, from what exceeds herself, her discomfort in relation to the world, to the people, to the relations. In Maura, the ‘literary word is a breaking-in’, that exceeds the limitations of the mere formal language. Thus, Maura escapes a search for the truth or establishment of a metanarrative and claims for herself on the right to speak, to establish a territory, a possible any. It is from this guideline that we are going to think about the work of Maura Lopes Cançado, emphasizing the relation between fictional and autobiographical writing, indicating how author and character interlock themselves and express feelings in relation to a certain constituted and established order.