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This paper analyzes the short story "2035", by Veronica Stigger, focusing in its construction over a boundary zone between the history of the Ragamuffin War and the constructed imaginary about this conflict inside South Brazil literary system. At first, studies of how the Ragamuffin War was represented in the history of literature are reviewed. Then, some pieces of news are analyzed for the purpose of understanding how the literary imaginary impacts contemporary thought in crystallizing a Ragamuffin War's romantic interpretation. Finally, "2035" is explored specifically in how this story dialogues with the history of South Brazil literature and with the contemporary popular discursiveness, rearranging the Ragamuffin War's romantic symbolism to express another side of the same myth. The results show how Stigger creates a "reverse imaginary" to Ragamuffin War, through a dystopian filter directed to what would be its bicentenary; the traditional ode to the Ragamuffin War's alleged republican values of liberty and equality is subverted in a representation of the elitist interests of those who idealized this revolution, of the not so triumphant side of this combat, of all the blood shed during this period and of the mysticism that involves the evoking of the Ragamuffin's past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Brazil, literary art is a realm in which esthetics --its cosmopolitan component-- is inseparable from politics --its local component--. This mixed, or amphibious, nature of contemporary Brazilian literature can have the effect of alienating readers both domestically and abroad. For literary artists, fiction constitutes simultaneously the production and dissemination of knowledge. This dual project is only partially attained in Brazil, where book shows on television have in many instances replaced reading, and internationally, where foreign readers have tended to prefer texts produced for export by lesser Brazilian writers, who denounce social injustice through the use of shocking rhetoric. This presentation addresses the difficulties that writers face in their utopian quest to explore the liberating aspects of art and politics in a country and in a region in which economic inequality, violence and social alienation are defining traits of the social order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this essay, we present the discussions related to the so-called marginal literature, a concept forged within the contemporary literary scene in Brazil, in which Ferréz's work has been especially celebrated since 2000. In order to do this, we first review different references and uses given to the term marginal throughout the Brazilian literary history in the 20th century. We then analyze the conditions that generated the contemporary definition of "marginal literature" and, thus, raise some questions about this idea in the field of literary and cultural criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes Cidade de Deus, Paulo Lins' novel published in 1997, and its adaptation to the homonymous feature film (2002), directed by Fernando Meirelles and co-directed by Katia Lund. The analysis focuses on the construction of realistic aspects concerning the violence of daily life in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (slums). According to the author, book and film reveal a high degree of literary and cinematographic elaboration in the achievement of a realistic or spontaneous effect. The novel is distinguished by the poetic quality of linguistic and narrative resources handled by the author, which were successfully redistributed on screen through the various components of cinematographic enunciation, particularly actors preparation and editing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]