Sênio: o legado intelectual de José de Alencar

Abstract

In 1870, when José de Alencar publishes A pata da gazela, he creates “another one of himself” and names him Sênio. With Sênio, he begins a new phase which he named literary elderliness. Still in 1870, he publishes O Gaúcho (1870), in which he brought a warning containing some reflections about the chosen pseudonym. From then on, the writer published his “winter defoliation” as part of a conscious and consistent action to systematize his literary and cultural project to the public. Our proposal in this thesis is to present some reflections about the last Alencar, working on his paratexts that were published between the first appearance of the pseudonym Sênio and the last moments of his work in 1877: prefaces, postscripts, notes, articles, pamphlets, controversies, and others. Our thesis revisits fundamental texts of the author to explain the project of Brazil that was embraced by Alencar. Some of this texts are widely known by the specialized critics – the literary autobiography Como e porque sou romancista, writen in 1873, the preface “Benção Paterna”, which is part of the novel Sonhos d’ouro (1872) – and others that are almost forgotten – “Questão filológica” (1874), “Antiguidade da América” (1877), among other texts. In the same direction, our work analyses the social condition of the author's production and the public reception of his critical-literary texts as a way of intensifying his literary experience, showing a different view of the literary space in the 19th century. As we elaborate a critical and intertextual study of Alencar's paratexts, we find that the choice for the pseudonym Sênio represented a chance in his intellectual activities.