The depicting of the ethnography in ‘Os papéis do inglês’ and ‘Nove noites’: between denial and boycott

Abstract

In this article, we intend to reflect about ethnography in the works Os papéis do inglês, by Angolan writer Ruy Duarte de Carvalho and Nove noites, by Brazilian Bernardo Carvalho. Considering the “interferences and contiguities” between literature and anthropology, we investigate the configuration of ethnographic writing in the literary field, noting that at the same time that ethnography appears in the novel of Bernardo Carvalho and Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, it is paradoxically denied or boycotted. From this, we will think about the representation of the “other” – considered the non- -Western, in the case of Os papéis do inglês, the Kuvale pastors, and, in the case of Nove noites, the Krahô Indians – in the narratives. Therefore, we will analyze how the ethnographic works and its effects on the novels’ narrative, as well as the tensions between the narrator and the “Other”.

Keywords

• Etnografia, literatura, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, Bernardo Carvalho.