The Civil Law in ‘Rosaura, a enjeitada’ by Bernardo Guimarães: “[…] eternal and unsolvable problem […]”
Abstract
The central objective of this article is to understand how Bernardo Guimarães in his book ‘Rosaura, a enjeitada’ presented aspects of the Civil Law in Brazil in XIX century. For this we will take into account the plot of the characters and the legal training of the author, at the Faculty of Law of São Paulo. In this sense, we ask: Why, is Civil Law considered as ‘an eternal and insoluble problem’, in relation to 19th century slavery in Brazil? How does the author present his arguments to defend such a thesis? The central problematic circumscribes the understanding that students occupied a social place that allowed the production of diverse writings (memoirs, theses, academic journals, novels, poetry, among others), which dealt with themes pertaining to imperial Brazil, especially slavery. In order to achieve the proposed objective the method of historical research was used to analyze the literary work, interrogating and problematizing the document. In this article, to mobilize the object we resort to the concept of repertoire, according to Alonso (2002). This concept served as a magnifying glass for the analysis of the work in focus. Finally we emphasize that the author used a born free slave to deal with slavery and Civil Law, showing how ‘Rosaura’, a victim of the system of slavery, could be restored as free from the evils of slavery that she had suffered since her birth. The author mobilized repertoires of legal culture from the intelectual circle of the Faculty of Law of São Paulo. Thus, within a general analysis of narrative, the expressions of law appear as social and legal elements, used not only as a mere elucidation. Certainly, there was selectivity and intentionality to report the contents of the laws in Brazil.
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