Memória, história e narrativa na obra Senhorinha Barbosa Lopes, de Samuel Medeiros

Abstract

The present study analyzes the narrative identified with the historical novel Senhorinha Barbosa Lopes: a history of female resistance in the Paraguayan War (2007) by Samuel Medeiros. The research explores the book written at the beginning of the 21st century, which narrates a woman's journey in a condition of frontier and war, throughout the 19th century and the threshold of the 20th century, while telling about the process of occupation of the lands in the south of the province of Mato Grosso, at the time still undivided. Under the Cultural History paradigm, the objective is to understand a narrative, which deals with the appropriation of memorialist and historiographical discourses in the present, which is used to represent the region's past. Based on the theory of History and Literature, and considering the historical novel as a literary source/object, this study seeks to reflect on the criteria, techniques and content of historical extraction that support the construction of hybrid narratives between fiction and history, in which present-past relations seem to dialogue in the same degree of intensity and justification in the construction of events. The research results indicate that memorialist literary writing in Senhorinha Barbosa Lopes contributes to the maintenance of discourses on official collective memories produced within the Instituto Histórico Geográfico de Mato Grosso do Sul and the Academia Sul-mato-grossense de Letras, given that the writer bases himself on the bibliographic collections of these institutions to recompose characters and historical scenarios in the novelistic plot. Furthermore, it is observed that the literary source/object itself, as it is a historical novel, represents a change in the style and genre of memorial writing practiced by memorial institutions.