Entre "o Romantismo tão gasto e o Realismo tão vasto": os tableaux de Joaquim Serra e o ecletismo

Abstract

This paper proposes a brief commentary about a part of the poetry of a name now virtually ignored in the Brazilian literary tradition: Joaquim Serra (1838-88). Creator of a extensive body of work which is widely forgotten, the author born in the state of Maranhão was also an important journalist, politician, a great political writer linked to the abolitionist press, playwright and poet. As a poet, although having also created verses in dialog with the predominant tendencies in romantic literature, Serra became associated with a ruralist or “sertanista” genre of poetry, which surfaced inside this same romantic generation. Herein, what strikes most about Serra’s poetry work aren’t the rustic pictures but the urban tableaux with a humorous registry of the characterization of scenes and types, and conceived in a inten- se dialog with the theatre, in a mixture or fusion of genres which, thanks to the safe conduct of the Romanticism, he explored in several other moments in his works.