“Without a portresses”: Nothing more South-South than the South of America

Abstract

Aldyr Garcia Schlee, in a 1989 article, put forward the thesis that the fictional production originating in Uruguay, Argentina and Rio Grande do Sul can be understood as a unit, proposing that it be called “gaucho literature”. This literary material would result from exchanges, intentional or not, between authors working in these regions, going beyond the limits of national and linguistic territorialities. The examination of narratives by Aldyr Garcia Schlee, taken from Contos de sempre, and by João Simões Lopes Neto, belonging to Contos gauchescos, validates the proposal, presenting itself as an alternative to nationalist Regionalism as described by the History of Brazilian Literature since the beginning of the 20th century. The parallel established with Antonio Candido’s conception, affirmed in “Literatura e subdesenvolvimento” (Literature and Underdevelopment), makes it possible to understand a South-South comparatism introjected by the literary works of the present and the past.