Da sujeição à subjetivação: a literatura como espaço de construção da subjetividade, na obra de Maria Firmina dos Reis

Abstract

This work proposes some insights in respect to the novel Úrsula by Maria Firmina dos Reis (1825-1917). We intend to present how the writer established a dialog with the “classic founders” of nineteenth-century literature through the composition of her black characters, as to intentionally provide an aesthetic and ideological answer to the predominant literary models of her epoch. The proposition is to demonstrate how the writer developed, in her literary production, the first black characters (slaves or freed slaves) constituted as subjects in nineteenth-century Brazilian literature.