HOBSBAWM, INTERPRETER FROM GUIMARÃES ROSA’S BACKLANDS

Abstract

Among the methodological paths that involve History and Literature, this work examines the formation and dissolution of social reformers groups within the countryside cultures in the 20th century shown by Eric Hobsbawm in works such as Bandits (1969) and Guimarães Rosa in Grande sertão: veredas (1956). In the proposal for this dialogue, the aim is also to expand the interpretative path of the Rosa’s novel, taking as its starting point the examination of Hobsbawmian “social banditry”. On the other hand, we also seek to contribute to this branch of historiography by bringing up the figure of the jagunço from Minas Gerais, a sample of the social outcast who escaped Hobsbawm’s classification, but which still obeys the typologies established by this intellectual, although Rosa’s writing intentionally shuffled them. Since these two observers-participants from the last century were never properly confronted, an approximation of both is launched in order to move towards a more total understanding of the Brazilian hinterland which, sometimes, breaks with the national topography, erecting something bigger, namely: a metonymy of all the western territories where the violence and the excesses of the State reign.