O barroco como cosmovisão matricial do Êthos cultural brasileiro

Abstract

The present project is an explanation of the preliminary results of an on-going research, actually in its initial stage, despite years of meditation on the theme. The effort to characterize the Baroque style implies not only an analysis of the diversity of concepts that the term embodies, but also a verification of the evolution process that it has undergone in its definition as well as in its appreciation. Grosso modo, we may didactically impute to great scholars of baroque its filiation to two antagonist currents of conception: 1) its perception as a cultural phenomenon historically delimited between the final years of the XVI century and middle of the XVIII century(but whose temporal demarcations vary according to the social place considered as it occurs in all cultural movements); and 2) the vision of Baroque as a trans-historic category, being faced through diversified forms in different moments of history and with a broad and varied geography. The discussions are prolonged in their unfoldings and inclinations; but the most brilliant defender of that comprehension of Baroque as a species of éon, abstract entity, object of successive incarnation and expressions, was the Spanish philosopher Engenio D’ORS, who, in his work Lo Barroco, presents his theory in a seductive way. Even with followers like Henri FOCILLON or Ernst R CURTIUS, the questioning still endures. As for Brazil, – the main focus of this research – the exploratory territory is immense, to mention as an only example the literary field, in addition to names at the level of a Gregório de Mattos and A. Vieira, the enrichment of languages and of technical and expressive processes opened perspectives for new styles; this makes the new criticism to accept the existence of a baroque constant along our historical-cultural process, as has been illustrated in recent times in the poetry of Jorge de Lima or in the prose of Guimarães Rosa, etc.