From Cacau (1933) to São Jorge dos Ilhéus (1944): the memory of Jorge Amado’s literary criticism in the 20th century

Abstract

The article’s objective is to present the critical reception of the novels Cacau (1933), Suor (1934), Jubiabá (1935), Mar morto (1936), Capitães da areia (1937), Terras do sem fim (1943) and São Jorge dos Ilhéus (1944), by the writer Jorge Amado, throughout the 20th century, in order to demonstrate how the hegemony of a certain sedimentation of meanings to the detriment of others took place. That means the critical reading that takes the writer's fictional production as a tributary of social reality, his literature being not only a mere reflextion of the structures of Bahian society in the first half of the 20th century but also of the novelist’s political and ideological conducts. Thus, through the notion of “memory of critical reception”, supported by the studies of the Aesthetics of Reception, by Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser, we will consider the critical texts published in newspapers, supplements and literary journals, compendia, anthologies and histories of literature, as memory supports, that is, as a medium of eternization of meanings, values, judgments and uses of the writer’s aforementioned corpus, identifying in Brazilian criticism a romantic, naturalistic, realistic, and later, a Marxist tradition. The review allows us, for example, to identify the theoretical-critical framework used for the notorious rejection of Jorge Amado in the academy and the association of his work with the label of “minor literature”.