A literatura proverbial de Carolina Maria de Jesus e Beatriz Nascimento

Abstract

This thesis proposes the recognition of proverbial literature as a legitimate form of literary textuality and an aesthetic manifestation of Brazilian Black literature. Grounded in African aesthetic-philosophical matrices, especially in Bantu and Yorùbá traditions, the research analyzes the works Provérbios (1963), by Carolina Maria de Jesus, and Todas [as] Distâncias (2015), by Beatriz Nascimento, proposing their reading as expressions of oraliture, in the sense of Leda Maria Martins (1997; 2021) and Félix Ayoh’Omidire (2020), and of inscripture, according to Queiroz (2007), all rooted in ancestrality as a theoretical-critical category, from Eduardo Oliveira (2007; 2019). The central question revolves around how proverbial inscriptions – historically marginalized – can be understood and legitimized as literature, challenging hegemonic criteria of literariness. For this, the concept of epistemic crossroads is adopted as an analytical field, articulating ancestral knowledge, African worldviews and Black epistemes to reposition proverbs as expressions of an ancestral ethics and aesthetics. It also proposes the notion of literary aquilombamento as a time-space of aesthetic and political convergence, where Black voices inscribe themselves in the circularity of time, in the listening of drums and in the reinvention of Black epistemologies. The analysis unfolds in four movements: (1) proverbial inscriptions as Bantu inscriptures permeated by Yorùbá knowledge; (2) proverbial lyricism traversed by the musicality of the drum; (3) the centrality of the Orí as a poetic-philosophical orientation; and (4) the Carolinian proverbial narrative as an expression of a poetics of mothering and collectivity. The methodology, rooted in Black epistemology and anchored in ancestry as a macro-analytical category, summons the literary xirê, activating a conceptual network that articulates oraliture as literature-terreiro, as taught by Henrique Freitas (2016). The critical weaving mobilizes concepts such as the cruzo of Martins (1997; 2021), the fractal migration of Abreu Paxe (2016), the epistemic looting of Freitas (2016), as well as memory, affectivity, corpOrality, Ori(s)cience, mothering, the ancestral feminism of Anikeade Omidire (2018) and the matripotence according to Oyèwùmí (2021). The reading is guided by the Orí, oriented by the rhythm of the drums and by the corporeality of the word, assuming the circularity of time as a foundation for critical reading and meaning-making. The thesis proposes rewriting the place of proverbial literature in Brazilian literary historiography, inscribing it as an (est)ethics of Black, collective and ancestral experience, in which body, memory and word spin in spirals of knowledge and resistance. By validating Black aesthetics as pillars of reexistence, the research reshapes literary boundaries and expands the aesthetic experiences of the Brazilian literary genealogy.