Uma didática da invenção: Re-envisioning the material world in the poetry of Manoel de Barros

Description

Manoel de Barros is often characterized as the poet laureate of the Pantanal wetlands, a voice of Brazil’s wilderness landscapes as counterpoint to the city-based modernismo. But this narrow characterization robs Barros’s work of the profound and universal insight which it so often achieves, demonstrating new ways of imagining the relationship between the human and the non-human, and delivering a timely and some would say urgently necessary reassessment of our role and place in the world. This book examines Barros’s work in a global context, engaging with the emerging field of ecological literary criticism (or eco- criticism) and arguing that Barros can be seen not merely as a poet to whom such a critique can be applied, but as an innovator and creator in this critical sphere, often long before academic work caught up with such radical readings of the material world. Not part of the São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro literary scenes, Barros is not particularly well known outside of Brazil, but in a world in which the effects of our actions on our planet are ever more vivid, and the need for radical thought and action ever more pressing, never has his incisive verse been more relevant.