The backcountry is Brazil: socio-historical reinterpretations of the Grande Sertão Veredas

Abstract

The article presents the importance of the work The Great Backcountry: Byways (1956) by Guimarães Rosa in two senses present in its critical fortune: first, it rescues the canonical reading of the novel that highlights its linguistic relevance, as well as the existential and metaphysical components. In this sense, the backcountry taken as a totality also allows the reader to reflect on the totality of the world. Secondly, it lists the main re-readings made at the turn of the 1990s to the 2000s, which privilege the socio-historical elements elaborated by the author in the novel, which, in turn, contribute to the understanding of the challenges of Brazilian society from the first half of the twentieth century. These two movements form the core of the article, preceded by an introduction that suggests the understanding that Guimarães Rosa's novel can be taken as a continuation, albeit with particularities, of the tradition of committed literature analyzed by Antonio Candido. The objective of the article is to show that the hinterland of Rosa, in which the “system of thugs” is overcome and, at the same time, maintained, can be seen as an expression of Brazil, whose national formation takes place without overcoming the aspects that come from the past.