“Manuais de conduta” contemporâneos ou “manifestos” feministas para mulheres: uma leitura do feminino na trilogia crônica de Martha Medeiros

Abstract

This research has pointed to discuss the literary chronicle genre and its narrating voices from the analysis of the trilogy Paixão Crônica (2016), Liberdade Crônica (2015) and Felicidade Crônica (2014), by the writer Martha Medeiros. It has been established as the guiding problem of the thesis the fact that the writing of the author in analysis, even set in a time when the freedoms of being and being subject in the world depend a lot on the subject, centering his writing in a way of orienting women, either to convince them (manifest) or to educate them (manual). It defends the thesis that the books analysis corpus work as a contemporary manual of conduct or as feminist manifests, putting the chronic gender in check as to its “function” in this female writing. In this manner, the object of study is configured in the image of the chronicle as establishing standards of conduct and political calling for women today. The chronic books as conduct manuals were not analyzed in a negative form, but from the perspective of productivity (Foucault, 1979; 2001a; 2001b). The concept of female chronicles and writing has been discussed in the light of works such as Crônica – história, teoria e prática (1993), by Flora Bender; A crônica (1987), by Jorge de Sá; Pena de Aluguel (2005), by Cristiane Costa, when the appropriation of the structure and functioning of the genre in its interpretative bases; more over supporting this discussion, the studies by Bonnici and Zolin (2009) are based on this issue; Bastos and Adriana Araújo (2011); de Queiroz (1997); and Antoine Compagnon (2006). The issues of order about women and literature were being reflected from Touraine (2010); de Silva (2010); Cavalcanti et al. (2006); and Buarque de Holanda (2018) and (2019). Methodologically, 20 chronicles were selected, extracted from the three works, as a reading corpus that supports the thesis. As a critical discussion, it is understood that Martha Medeiros' chronicle is built on cultural perspective that focuses on the field of female experience in guiding women's thinking to build themselves, without the conduct manual or feminist manifest has being read in the deterministic perspective, strait jacket or somewhat similar.