The Literary Achievement of João Guimarães Rosa

Studies in the Literary Achievement of João Guimarães Rosa, The Foremost Brazilian Writer of the Twentieth Century
Editors: Ligia Chiappini, David Treece, Marcel Vejmelka
The Edwin Mellen Press, 2012

This long awaited and very much deserved anthology is the first of its kind in the English language: an anthology entirely dedicated to the study of  works by João Guimarães Rosa. Originally published in Brazil in 2009, the anthology collects selected academic essays first presented at an international symposium held in Berlin, Germany, in December 2008, in celebration of Guimarães Rosa’s centenary, and has just recently been translated into English.

David Treece, one of the editors of the anthology (and the English translator of a collection of short stories by Guimarães Rosa) had this to say about the anthology when I first spoke with him in May, 2010:

“The volume that we’re publishing, I think, could be very important. It’s a very wide-ranging anthology of essays, which came out of some conferences that we were organizing in 2008. The essays range from overviews of the impact of Guimarães Rosa on Brazilian Culture as a whole, surveys of the impact his works have had in the other arts and elsewhere in literature, essays on adaptations of his work for the cinema, very in-depth literary analysis of work including Grande Sertão, his short stories and other texts, there is a biographical essay by Guimarães Rosa’s daughter—a whole range. So I think this book could be something of a companion to Guimarães Rosa. That’s where we are in the Anglophone world with Guimarães Rosa: we have a limited number of translations to work with, [now we have] a kind of companion study, the anthology.”

A companion indeed. Or better yet: twenty six companions (writers, translators and scholars, Guimarães Rosa’s daughter among them), representing seventeen universities in nine countries. Individuals who have studied Guimarães Rosa for decades in many cases, and provide the English reader with otherwise inaccessible insights into the work of (as the lengthy yet appropriate title states) the foremost Brazilian writer of the twentieth century. This work will prove invaluable to the reader who truly wishes to understand the scope of the impact Guimarães Rosa has had on modern world literature and the arts.

If you can’t afford the $139.95 to get your own copy, share its importance  with your university library and encourage them to buy a copy for yourself and future generations. I can’t imagine anything like it will be published again any time soon.

∞

Studies in the Literary Achievement of João Guimarães Rosa, The Foremost Brazilian Writer of the Twentieth Century

Table of Contents

The Multiple Dimensions of Guimarães Rosa
Alfredo Bosi

Introduction
Ligia Chiappini, David Treece, Marcel Vejmelka

Part I: Legacy, Reception, Translation

Reading Guimarães Rosa Today: An Inventory
Walnice Nogueira Galvão

Challenges for the Translator in the Case of Rosa

Translating Guimarães Rosa into English
David Treece

The Un/translatability of Cultures: The Case of João Guimarães Rosa
Horst Nitschack

Moimeichego, or Fraquilim Meimeio? (The Role of the Translator of That Which We Call Rosa)
Vlasta Dufková

Traductor in fabula. Linguistic Cooperation in the Italian Translation of Guimarães Rosa
Roberto Mulinacci

Reception, Perspectives and Mediations

Sertão, Savanna and Musseques. Space and Language in João Guimarães Rosa in Dialogue with African Realities Marcel Vejmelka

The Reception of João Guimarães Rosa in France
Jacqueline Penjon

Routes of Death and Life: Rosa’s Works in Seminars in Minas Gerais
Lélia Parreira Duarte

João Guimarães Rosa in Spain. The Revista de Cultura Brasileña
Pilar Gómez Bedate

Part II: Rosa’s Short Stories

Spaces, Paths and Voices in Rosa’s Short Stories

The Right to Interiority in João Guimarães Rosa
Ligia Chiappini

Becoming a Jaguar as an Act of Resistance: “Meu tio o Iauaretê” and the Tupi-Guarani
Lúcia Sá

Casa Grande Sertão: Exception and Literature in Guimarães Rosa (In the Light of a Novel by Cornélio Penna) Roberto Vecchi

Female Voices in Guimarães Rosa’s Work
Cleusa Rios P. Passos

Voices from the Centre and from the Periphery
Sandra Guardini T. Vasconcelos

Part III: Rosa as Novelist

João Guimarães Rosa’s East-Western sertão
Francis Utéza

Spaces, Paths and Voices in Grande Sertão: Veredas

The veredas of Time. Dialectics of Time Images in Grande Sertão: Veredas by João Guimarães Rosa
Vincenzo Arsillo

From Machado’s Irony to Rosa’s Intimate Intensity
Kathrine Holzermayr Rosenfield

Diadorim: The Offering of Love
Flávio Aguiar

“I Could Stop Here”: Figures of Rereading in Grande Sertão: Veredas
Clara Rowland

The Backlands of Brazil—Yesterday and today

Voices of Violence in the Backlands: A Dramatic Reading of an Episode of Grande Sertão: Veredas
Willi Bolle

The Backlands of the Liberal Republic (1889-1930): State of Violence and State Violence
Luiz Roncari

The Child’s World-view in the sertão of Minas Gerais
Ute Hermanns

Miguilim at the Movies: From the Novella “Campo Geral” to the Film Mutum
Ana Luiza Martins Costa

Part IV: Memory

João Guimarães Rosa, My Father
Vilma Guimarães Rosa

Index ISBN10:  0-7734-3953-6   ISBN13:  978-0-7734-3953-5    Pages:  460    Year:  2012 USA
List Price: $139.95 UK List Price: £ 84.95

(Source: http://www.mellenpress.com)

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