Specificities of the first gaucho novel: a study on A divina pastora

Abstract

The Brazilian literature is characterized by novels that represent the historical events that occurred in Brazil at different times. In the specific case of Rio Grande do Sul, the relationship between literature and history is presented as an ongoing project of fiction. This relationship appears in the first Gaucho novel: A divina pastora byCaldre e Fião, published in 1847. Although it was published more than one century ago, critical studies on the novel are still very limited.
In the proposed work, we present a study on this work aiming at describing the trajectory of its literary context in Brazil, analyzing the speech of the narrator and investigating the transposition of historical facts for the fictional narrative. Caldre e Fião wrote A divina pastora at a time when the novel was starting to be consider as a genre in Brazil. For this reason, there is a style quite
distanced from what is observed in the evolution of the writing of novels. Among the features of the style, there is the insistent inclusion of footnotes explaining words particular to Gaucho Portuguese , for instance, situations and behaviors peculiar to gauchopeople, characteristics of the land, the climate, the topography, and historical facts. This gives a structure to the didactic novel, while “diving off”, effectively, into the fictional universe.