<b>Cyro dos Anjos: the other face of the same coin</b> - DOI: 10.4025/actascilangcult.v31i1.296

Abstract

When Brazilian fiction acknowledged the social romance as characteristic of the 1930s, Cyro dos Anjos published O amanuense Belmiro in 1937. Harking against the most evidence principles of the social romance – the documental focus on the life of humble people, commitment, denouncement -, Cyro was shown to be an intimist writer and taxed to be a purely literary writer. As from the 1940s, however, others critics, such as João Etienne Filho, who in 1945 problematized the purely intimate character of the novel and of it’s author. In 1983 academic works were being undertaken, influenced or not by these critics, that enhanced a social approach for the novel. In the context of seventeen researches academically undertaken between 1976 and 2001, six revealed the novel O amanuense from a social perspective. The gradual re-vision of Cyro dos Anjos’s debut novel shows that the writer was not absolutely distant from the problems of his age.