Author : Flora Süssekind
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804730631
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (36 download)
Book Synopsis Cinematograph of Words by : Flora Süssekind
Download or read book Cinematograph of Words written by Flora Süssekind and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an extraordinarily imaginative attempt to analyze the relations between literature and technique in Brazil from the 1880s to the 1920s. The author suggests that in these relations we can see more clearly the shape of a period that is otherwise usually defined from a literary perspective as pre- or post- something or other, rather than in terms of its own characteristics. One such characteristic is the intense interaction with the new technologies then arising in Brazil, the beginning of the professionalization of writers, and a revision of the concept of literature, redefined as technique. The authors chief concern is to determine what is distinctive about the literary production of the period. Rather than focusing on literatures relations with visual art, with a rising social class, or with the sociopolitical divisions within the educated classes of Brazilian society, the author examines the crônica (a kind of journalistic essay), poetry, and fiction of these decades in terms of their encounter with a burgeoning technological and industrial landscape. This encounter is examined from two perspectives. The first is explicit representation: the portrayal in Brazilian literature of modern artifacts, new means of transformation and communication, and the newborn industries of advertising and commercial publication. The second perspective examines how these close contacts with the technological world came to shape cultural productionthat is, not how literature represents technique, but how literary technique changed as it incorporated procedures characteristic of photography, film, and poster art. This transformation was consistent and concurrent with significant changes taking place in the perceptions and sensibilities of the population of major Brazilian cities, a population increasingly attuned to images, the instant, and technology as all-powerful mediators of the urban landscape, time, and a subjectivity constantly under the threat of extinction.
