Historiographical writing through the writing of the self: the case of Como e por que ler o romance brasileiro

Abstract

This article analyses Como e por que ler o romance brasileiro (2004) by Marisa Lajolo through contemporary theories about history of literature. It is aimed a reflection on how its writing process points to a new direction regarding historical conceptions of the past, thus contributing to the restructuring of literary history’s and theory’s traditional groundings.  In order to do so, relevant theoretical perspectives on the historiographical writing of literature will be compared with the reflections of David Perkins, Siegfried Schmidt and Heidrun Olinto. The purpose is to show how, in that work, the author’s personality is a crucial factor on the fabric of the text. Subjectivity plays an important role in theoretical and material writing choices. Lajolo revisits her experiences as a reader and turn them into an element of her history of literature. It is, therefore, an exemplar case on how the construction of historical-literary knowledge came to admit the meddling of affective matters in its plural constituent elements.