Por uma literatura afro-brasileira: Memória, subjetividade, afetividade e maternidade na obra de Maria Firmina dos Reis.

Abstract

This thesis aims at resuming the literary historiography study of Maria Firmina dos Reis' place of writing in the political and cultural debates of the nineteenth century. To do so, we propose to put her work in the context of public discussions regarding slavery and its abolition in Brazil. From this perspective, we review her anti-slavery intellectual production, two of which are the novel Úrsula (1859) and the short story A escrava (The female slave, 1887). Based on this bibliographic overview, which includes pieces she wrote for several Maranhão – the state where she was born – newspapers, we gathered elements that allow us to analyze how the author represents (enslaved) Black people as political subjects with their own voice, through which she expressed her memory, subjectivity and affectivity in the context of enslaved motherhood. In this way, we highlight the role Maria Firmina dos Reis played in the daily life of her time through literature. An examination of her writings allows, after all, to re-signify the history of Black people, but this time conducted by a woman, writer and African-Brazilian. Moreover, this reopens the discussion about her production inclusion in or exclusion from the national literary and historiographical criticism.