Memória e futebol no Brasil: escritas da vida de jogadores brasileiros

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to the debate on the theme of football in the fields of Literature and History, specifically in memorial works. It present final results of a research developed in the last three years, that focused on the biographical and autobiographical production around prominent figures of Brazilian football that marked − or that still mark − time in the national and international sports landscape, and contributing to the construction of football image in Brazil since its inception, as well as the myth of the “country of football”, a changing myth in permanent transformation. In all, 18 works were analyzed, based on theoretical concepts from the areas of History and Literary Studies, especially around the genres “biography” and “autobiography”, as well as “memory” and “life history”. The research was guided by the following objectives: (1) to analyze the memorialist discourse formed from biographical or autobiographical works about Brazilian football players; (2) to study the specificities of possible narratives that feed the “myth” of the “homeland of cleats” and, respectively, of the “Brazilian style of football”; (3) finally, to contribute to the study of the relationship between History and Memory in the field of Literary Theory, focusing on the specificities of the composition of biographies and autobiographies.