Banca de DEFESA: FRANCISCO GESIVAL GURGEL DE SALES

Uma banca de DEFESA de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : FRANCISCO GESIVAL GURGEL DE SALES
DATE: 22/07/2026
TIME: 14:00
LOCAL: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (online)
TITLE:

Genius and Virtue: Representations of Madame de Stael in Biographical Sketches in the Nineteenth Century Brazilian Press (1839-1888)

KEY WORDS:

Madame de Staël. Journalistic biographism. Cultural transfer. Cultural practices. Representations.

 

PAGES: 169
BIG AREA: Lingüística, Letras e Artes
AREA: Letras
SUBÁREA: Literatura Comparada
SUMMARY:

This study analyzes biographical texts published in Brazilian periodicals between 1839 and 1888 that publicized the figure of the Franco-Swiss writer Anne-Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein (1766-1817). Madame de Staël was an influential intellectual during the transition from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, producing a substantial body of work encompassing political writings, literary criticism, philosophy, and fiction. She became widely known throughout Europe for her steadfast political opposition to the regime of Napoleon Bonaparte. The corpus examined in this study consists of texts published in periodicals from different regions of nineteenth-century Brazil. It is argued that the multifaceted space of the newspaper page functioned as a decisive element in the nation's cultural formation by reshaping borrowed contents and transforming them insofar as it consciously and deliberately offered entertainment, information, and curiosity to its target readership. Drawing on the methodological framework of Cultural Transfer Studies (Espagne & Werner, 1988; Espagne, 2017; Espagne, 2023) and on the notion of the transculturality of national spaces (Lüsebrink, 2017), this study employs Roger Chartier's (1991, 2002) concepts of practice, appropriation, and representation to demonstrate the process through which the cultural practice of journalistic biographism contributes to the construction of representations of Madame de Staël. The impact of the resemanticizations carried out through the already established biographical genre, as examined by Madelénat (1984), by means of journalistic biographism, reveals the active role of the press in shaping representations of national culture (Barboza, 2010). At the same time, a dynamic process of appropriating a foreign figure within the national context emerges through the circulation and publication of these texts in nineteenth-century Brazilian periodicals, resulting in the construction of the following representations: (a) an exemplary Enlightenment intellectual; (b) a model of feminine cultural distinction; (c) a formative intellectual authority; (d) a cultural authority legitimized in the public sphere; and (e) a cultural celebrity of public prominence.

 

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Presidente - 1423480 - WIEBKE ROBEN DE ALENCAR XAVIER
Interna - 1543253 - KATIA AILY FRANCO DE CAMARGO
Externo ao Programa - 1513790 - ANDREY PEREIRA DE OLIVEIRA - UFRNExterna à Instituição - MARTA PRAGANA DANTAS - UFPB
Externo à Instituição - TITO LÍVIO CRUZ ROMÃO - UFC