Memorials of Words: The Victim in Brazilian Literature

The victim historically occupies a prominent place in the Brazilian literature in a social context where, on the contrary, the representation of the victim is in a certain way totally interdicted. In an immediate genealogy, we have since 19th century until contemporary literature, many cases where the victim is in the center of the literary scene: in Machado de Assis' discrete engagement, the conflicts of the “pré-modernist” epoque in authors such as Lima Barreto and Euclides da Cunha, Modernist rearragements of the social violence in Graciliano Ramos' Vida Seca or Memórias do Cárcere; in classic masterpieces such as Guimarães Rosa's Grande sertão. Veredas or deep narrations on slavery such as Cornélio Penna's Menina morta or, in poetry, in Vida e morte severina by João Cabral de Melo Neto, or referring to the last authoritarian period, unfolding novels like Quarup by Antônio Callado, Em câmara lenta by Renato Tapajós or K. by Bernardo Kucinski. Current peripheral our marginal literature confirm the tendency inside the contemporary prose, problematizing victim's vocalization. The chapter try to discuss why the representation of the victim is so hypertrophic in Brazilian literature.