Estudos de Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea (Jan 2012)
Cidade de Deus: entre o testemunho e a ficção
Abstract
The following article discusses the problematic epistemological separation be- tween Paulo Lins's novel and the author's identity as a construct that redirects the text's message in very specific ways. This construct phenomenon affects the novel's fictional status on the account of its truth-value. In this sense, this study also analyses the reception of Lin's text under what has been epistemologically termed in Latin American subaltern studies as testimonio. The analysis of Lins's novel under the testimonial rubric allows for a meditation on questions related to any fictional text whose content stands too close to factually recognizable events, which takes the literary work and its possible classifications to an ontological cri- sis whose repercussions problematize literature as a vehicle of social denuncia- tion, and the author as the mediator of such a process.
