A Revista Criação & Crítica parte de uma provocação: pensar uma crítica cujo foco não seja a interpretação literária Somos, então, uma revista de crítica literária, sendo assim, todos os artigos, resenhas e traduções devem estar relacionados a tal universo. Com essa base, organizamos nossas publicações em dossiês temáticos. Nossa equipe é composta pela editora-chefe, Profa. Dra. Claudia Amigo Pino (Universidade de São Paulo), e pelo comitê editorial formado por Mônica Gama (Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto), Marcos Piason Natali (Universidade de São Paulo), Katerina Blasques Kaspar (Universidade de São Paulo), Leonardo Cavalcante Mendes (Universidade de São Paulo), Álvaro Faleiros (Universidade de São Paulo), Maurício Santana Dias (Universidade de São Paulo), Michel Sleiman (Universidade de São Paulo), Mário Ramos (Universidade de São Paulo) e Angélica Amâncio (Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3).
Universidade de São Paulo. Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas
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De uma língua à outra: o plurilinguismo literário na cultura contemporânea - espaços literários entre línguas
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Um clássico contemporâneo: A República Mundial das Letras, de Pascale Casanova
Traduzido por Rita Jover-Faleiros, este artigo foi originalmente publicado em Acta fabula, vol. 26, n° 7, « 25 ans d'Acta fabula. Un Cabinet de lectures » 2025, URL http://www.fabula.org/revue/document19778.php. Acesso em: 28/08/2025.
The serpent tongue of Eliane Marques: pretugués as the core of a border literature in dialogue with portuñol
This article explores hybrid linguistic forms as a poetic and aesthetic device in Louças de família (2023), a novel by Brazilian writer Eliane Marques. Focusing on the author’s engagement with Portuñol and Pretuguese, the study reflects on how these hybrid forms of language can be understood as a "serpent tongue," in the terms proposed by Chicana intellectual Gloria Anzaldúa. Methodologically, the article analyzes excerpts from the novel in which Spanish and Portuguese blend together and elements that align with Lélia Gonzalez’s notion of Pretuguese emerge. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the discussion draws on references from linguistics, comparative literature, and feminist criticism. The article concludes that Louças de família is not only set in a geographic borderland but also translates this liminality into its very use of language.
Modernismo translíngue: Sérgio Milliet, francógrafo brasileiro
Este artigo examina a produção em francês do poeta modernista Sérgio Milliet, como ela se desenvolveu entre 1917 e 1923. O objetivo é entender como e por que o escritor brasileiro optou por escrever na língua de Cendrars, antes de retornar à sua língua nativa quando voltou ao Brasil. Traduzido por Daniel Padilha Pacheco da Costa, este artigo retoma um capítulo e elementos do livro Diamétralement modernes. Poètes francophones d’Amérique latine (Sermier, 2025).
Writing Between Languages: Self-Translation as a Critical Gesture in Nancy Huston
This article examines self-translation as a critical gesture in Nancy Huston, especially from the essays, Nord Perdu (1999) / Losing North (2002). Articulating Translation Studies, Philosophy of Language and Literary Criticism, this article proposes that self-translation, far from being a mere transposition between languages, is a poetic principle, as in Samuel Beckett, as well as a political gesture, in Nancy Huston, capable of destabilizing linguistic hierarchies and revealing identity tensions. The analysis shows how the Anglophone Canadian writer, by writing directly in French and self-translating her books into English, performs the theoretical losing north that she describes. Self-translation thus becomes a constitutive part of the work's internal textual functioning, questioning fixed notions of original and translation. By emphasizing the creative, and not just technical, dimension of self-translation, the aim is to broaden the debate on literary plurilingualism, highlighting its potential to rethink disciplinary boundaries and the limits of translation. Finally, the perspective of losing north is the starting point for discussing self-translation in its political dimension, without obscuring its inherent contradictions.
“Tú no eres dominicano”: negociaciones de lenguaje y traducción en el universo de Junot Díaz
This paper seeks to analyze the plurilingualism applied in the work of Dominican Junot Díaz (2007), both from the original novel and from the Spanish translation. Thus, we focus on two elements: a) the code-switching present in the work; and b) the strategies used by translator Achy Obejas, whose translation, of a “foreignizing” nature, is configured as a subversive act against the hegemony of English. Both fronts of entry are strongly linked to the notion of “literatures without a fixed abode”, coined by the German theorist Ottmar Ette (2018), which vindicates movement in the face of attempts to fix literature in a specific place. Literatures without a fixed abode, thus, reflect the hybrid nature of identities, which, in the field of literature, is reinforced by the presence of authors who play with languages ​​and borders, as is the case with Junot Díaz.
Translating Débarcadères (1922) by Jules Supervielle into Portuguese: problems, solutions and horizons
Jules Supervielle (Montevideo, 1884 – Paris, 1960), a French-Uruguayan writer, published most of his work in the first half of the 20th century. He lived moving between South America and Europe, recording in his books this journey from north to south, along with other dichotomies. The poems of Débarcadères (1922) are an example of this, portraying multicultural landscapes and multilingual structures. They also mark a turning point in his work, blending the influence of modern aesthetics with classical paradigms that had previously characterized his writing. In this article, we report on the ongoing translation of Débarcadères into Portuguese, a project that stems from our doctoral dissertation. We discuss, in particular, three challenges and their provisional solutions: the use of inversion as a rhetorical device; the Spanish alexandrine; and the word that gives the collection its title.
Amerindian repertoires and translingual poetics in Brazil: translation, creation, and their glottopolitical inflections
In recent years, there has been a growing reflection on the glottopolitical dimensions of cultural practices on the agenda of Latin American Studies. This movement is in line with the questioning of the monolingual paradigm in current literature, as well as emphasizing the political role of the presence of indigenous languages and cosmologies on the contemporary cultural scene. Based on the assumption that literature and translation function as important agents of language policies, I propose the conceptual elaboration of a literary glottopolitical perspective, in order to debate forms of silencing of plurilingualism and translingualism in the Brazilian literary field, and on the other, to make visible the critical performativity that the zones of contact/friction between multiple language-cultures have brought to the poetic discourse. Therefore, I aim to discuss the correlations and tensions between creation and translation, provoked by the gestures of aesthetic appropiation of Amerindian linguistic and poetic repertoires, developed through procedures like quotation, selecting/montage and translation/self-translation by current indigenous and non indigenous authors. To this end, I analyze poems by Graça Graúna and Márcia Wayna Kambeba, as well as transcreations of Guarani Mbya repertoire by poet-translators Douglas Diegues and Josely Vianna Baptista.
The poetics of coolitude as a crossing and horizon of awareness and resistance in déwé gorodé’s lyrics: a translingual francophone space
Studies on translingual poetics bring to light the names of canonical authors of different nationalities. Focusing on French-language writers, we observe that they often live between languages, due to the historical linguistic situation related to territorial conquests or colonization, which often resulted in linguistic imposition. Thus, literary creation emerges in the various French-speaking geographical spaces around the world, within a peculiar context shaped by the diversity of the language itself. How, then, does translingual writing manifest itself as a form of resistance among "Francophone" writers? This paper aims to discuss how the literary production of so-called "Francophone" authors arises in a space of resistance against the historical imposition of the French language. From a theoretical perspective, De Balsi (2024) anchors the discussions on translingual Francophonie, while Torabully (1992) explores the poetics of coolitude in maritime spaces. Following this, I provide an overview of translingual production in the Francophone world, highlighting the coexistence of multiple languages alongside French. Finally, I focus on the lyrical works of Francophone women poets from the Pacific, particularly the Kanak poet Déwé Gorodé, whose poetics of coolitude serves as the foundation for a lyrical expression of cultural resistance through language.
A Possible Theatrical Language: A Study on Foreignness in Contemporary Brazilian Playwriting
This article offers a reflection on the meaning effects produced by the use of foreign languages in contemporary playwriting, taking as a starting point Henri Meschonnic’s notion of rhythm, which displaces language beyond signification and code. In dialogue with Marion Chénetier-Alev, who identifies the use of other languages as a critical and political tool in the European stage context, the text turns to the work of Brazilian playwrights who mobilize foreignness as a poetic operation. The focus then shifts to the contemporary Brazilian stage, observing experiences in which the foreign—through language, through rhythm—crosses the text. These practices challenge the hegemony of linguistic norms and activate Brazilian Portuguese as a sensitive matter, embedded in histories, violence, and translation. Playwriting is thus conceived as an operation that constructs new meanings in the passage between languages, establishing a zone of contagion where language no longer recognizes itself in a stabilized form. The article ultimately proposes the idea of a theatrical language—unstable, rhythmic, continuous, ephemeral—that invents and reconfigures the relations between language, body, and world.
The Translator Translated: foreign Versions of Haroldo de Campos’ Transcreation Theory
Haroldo de Campos’ transcreation theory and practice have received significant attention in Brazil and abroad over the past decades. His incorporation of foreign poets into the Brazilian literary system via translation has been understood through the metaphor of “anthropophagy” used by Haroldo de Campos himself. However, not much energy has been put into understanding the extensive network of international translation agents he set forth to promote foreign versions of his own poems and essays. Learning from his American master, Ezra Pound, to be an “entrepreneur of the arts”, Haroldo de Campos tried to publicise foreign versions of his poems and essays in different languages, as evidenced by his continued effort to publish them in international journals and books. Based on a survey of foreign versions in six different languages (Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, and Polish) of his 20 most significant essays on his transcreation theory, we seek to understand the extent of its dissemination abroad.
Unprofitable sailor: on Héctor Bianciotti's “La barque sur le Neckar”
This article proposes a reading of Hector Bianciotti's short story "Le barque sur le Neckar" (1982), considering the Argentine author´'s transition from Spanish (the language of his birth country) to French. To this goal, reference is made to his early works and to the way in wich the author has argued for his inclusion in the French language. It analyzes the author´' s reception discourses at the French Academy of Literature, and invokes the theoretical concepts of fetishism (BHabba, 2005), and mother tonge (Melman, 1992), among others.
Generalized hyperbolitis (or notes against exophony)
The text offered for reading, to whom it may concern, is a theoretical debate around the notion that translation is an exercise in displacement from one language to another. In order to stress this point, arguments by Tawada Yōko around exophony (speaking and writing in the language of the other, minimally presupposing bilingualism) and by Jacques Derrida around the monolingualism of the Other (a minimally aporetic condition that reveals colonial violence) are reread. This post-colonial and deconstructive re-reading aims to criticize the applicability of the notion of exophony to Tawada's work, highlighting the reinforcement of colonial erasure as a condition for the construction of the figure of a native who chooses either to remain monolingual or to venture into learning the language of the other. The end of the text tries to suggest that this exercise is both the translation of a desire and the act of translation itself, present not only in plurilingualism, but also in monolingualism.
Multiculturalism and cosmopolitan expressions in Mínimos, múltiplos, comuns, by João Gilberto Noll
This paper aims to investigate four literary narratives from João Gilberto Noll's Minimos, múltiplos, comuns (2003), which allow for an encounter with otherness by proposing different cultural points of view. To this end, the concept of literature as a resource that allows contact with diverse logics is mobilized. The aim here is to revisit the concept of cosmopolitanism and investigate cosmopolitan expressions and the coexistence of cultural multilogies in four short stories, based on the narratives of borderline characters, in which there is a coexistence between cultures and different ways of life. It is clear that the narratives analyzed foster cross-cultural encounters and serve to broaden reading horizons and the practice of specific literary knowledge (knowing how to live, survive and coexist), which contributes to the collective establishment of the notion of the common good.
La génétique des textes à la génétique des traductions: le(s) chaînon(s) manquant(s)
When developed in France in the 1970s, the object of genetic criticism was to study a literary work’s creative process. Although it has since opened up to other, non-textual corpora that have renewed the discipline’s methodological and theoretical boundaries, the elaboration of texts remains at the heart of its analyses. Research on translated texts also contributes to this. Studies on the creative process of translators emerged around the same time in different places (Brazil, Italy, France...). As such, they respond both to the need to explore the elaboration of a translation and the epistolary between translator and author and to interrogate the impact of these interactions on the translated text. They also question all the paratextual issues that accompany the output of a translation. This article focuses on the evolution from genetic criticism of literary texts to genetic criticism of translations. It shows that, in France, genetic studies on translations have benefited from exchanges, often informal, with Brazilian researchers. They have also been strongly inspired by research into literary plurilingualism, which has helped to push back the frontiers of genetic criticism by offering researchers new corpora and new theoretical and methodological challenges. Indeed, the three creative modalities –writing between languages, self-translation and translation (in particular, collaborative translation)– are very closely interconnected and need to be understood as a complex creative and documentary whole.
Among Languages: Translation and Literatures of the South
This article proposes that the translation violence of the colonising process – in terms of the confrontation between oral languages and ones with written grammars – coupled with the institutionalisation of a given language as the national one, contains both a memory of the silencing of indigenous languages and cultures, and of transculturation (ORTIZ). The latter, in turn, manifests itself, among other ways, through books that in different ways deal with the relationship between the West and descendants of the first-nation peoples of South America (especially in Circum-Roraima, the triple-border region between Brazil, Venezuela and Guyana) and those of African descent (particularly in discussions about the use of the coloniser’s language or the indigenous languages by writers from former colonies).
Languages and translations in confrontation
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Literature and Becoming in the Classroom: The Epiphany of Knowing in Stoner (1965), by John Williams
This article proposes an analysis of the transformation process faced by the character William Stoner, the protagonist of Stoner (1965), by John Williams, based on his disturbing contact with Literature at university. Born under the impositions of work in his family's farm, Stoner sees in the opportunity of studying Agricultural Sciences a way of providing a better future for his parents. However, the discovery of Literature, through a decisive encounter with Professor Archer Sloane, restructures the character's trajectory, leading him to a new perception of reality, no longer marked by the utilitarianism that alienated him from the enjoyment of life. In light of Paulo Freire's conception of educação libertadora (1985), in which the act of asking questions establishes a community construction of knowledge, and Antonio Candido's (1988) view of Literature as an experience that is far from being "harmless", we seek to examine the moment of Stoner's transformation in the novel: the reading of Shakespeare's sonnet 73 in class, and Sloane's questioning, which will make Stoner discover the existence of something – a kind of key – that can be achieved to give meaning to Literature and, by extension, to life.
ChatGPT, comparative literature and literary theory
The dissemination of LLM’s as ChatGPT generates doubts and issues of first scale for researchers and professors, especially those of humanities. From the experience of giving lessons of literature and literary theory, arises multiple critical views and calls for thinking new technologies, its problems, and some ethical, cognitive and philosophical implications of its use. This article aims to discuss some of these possibilities, with special attention to the potential power and to the implicit limits of technology, which, as Neil Postman put, always giveth and always taketh away.
A Method: Fragments. Experiences with Roland Barthes's didactics
This article aims, firstly, to establish some elements of Roland Barthes' didactic method in his seminars at the École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where he was Director of Studies from 1962 to 1977. To do this, we start with his texts on didactics (such as Lesson and “Au séminaire”), then we discuss his theoretical bases (Benveniste, Nietzsche and Bataille), for finally describe documentary research of the notes for the seminars “The thesis and research” (1972-1973), “The author's lexicon” (1973-1974) and “The amorous discourse” (1974-1976). We then report on two experiences of applying this method at the University of São Paulo, in the courses “French Novel 2” (2018) and “French Narrative” (2022).
Bringing together a set of scenes that may have occurred in a classroom at some Brazilian university, the paper, part of a book in progress, seeks to contribute to the development of an archive that would allow for the detailed study of teaching and the classroom, including its characters, its materiality, its stage objects, its libidinal economy, and its discursive genres. The use of the indeterminacy of fiction, with scenes presented as if they were literary sketches, allows for the emergence of a type of writing that recognizes the unpredictability and singularity of what occurs in any classroom, yet at the same time seeks to be respectful of the implicit pact that protects the confidentiality of the participants in the peculiar block of space and time that is a class. The proximity to literature also seeks to stimulate a certain way of reading these scenes, recovering speculative exercises and hermeneutic practices normally associated with the fable and the parable.
Partindo de uma colagem de cenas e falas que ocorreram antes, durante e após o colóquio “A sala de aula como laboratório: Experiências no ensino de literatura”, o texto pensará os limites e potenciais da representação da fala de alunos de graduação em diferentes contextos — como na sala de aula, num colóquio, numa conversa entre amigas e neste próprio texto — para esboçar outras formas e possibilidades de estudo e produção de saber.
The teacher and the reader: women as inductors into writing
Throughout The Diaries of Emilio Renzi, Ricardo Piglia mentions several women who played a central role in his beginnings as a writer: his elementary school teacher, his high school classmate, his mother. Women also teach writers by means of their reading, such as Felice Bauer, idealized by Franz Kafka in his diaries and letters, or Anya, the typist in a hybrid novel by J. M. Coetzee. After examining the writings of the self in Piglia, Kafka, and Coetzee in a teaching context, the female figures who stimulate and who receive the writings of male authors turned to me like a strange mirror. In this text, I propose a reflection on how the figurations of the woman-teacher and the woman-reader are constructed in different contemporary works, and finish by narrating the experience of an undergraduate course in which my students wrote a diary as their final project.
The body in the classroom/ the body on stage
Starting from two texts by Roland Barthes on the subject of the classroom – the inaugural lecture at the Collège de France and "Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers" – in which the word paisible appears (translated differently by Leyla Perrone-Moisés and Mario Laranjeira, translators of these respective texts, as "calm" and "peaceful"), the inquiry focuses on moments when calm is disrupted in the classroom, particularly when the body comes into play. This exploration is developed through examples from literature, theater, and cinema – such as the play Conselho de Classe by Jô Bilac, the film Entre les Murs by Laurent Cantet, and the short story "Letter to the Foundation" by Lydia Davis – as well as reflections on our own classroom experience, drawn from 15 years of teaching at the Federal University of São Paulo.
Greco-roman literature and controversial topics in university teaching practice
In the university context, the inclusion of cross-cutting themes in the syllabuses of classical literature subjects - Greek and Latin - broadens, in the classroom, the debate on controversial or sensitive topics that, when deepened, can contribute to the formation of critical readers and citizens aware of the problems of Brazilian society. We developed the analysis of our teaching practice from the perspective that Yun Lee Too (1998), in Power and Pedagogy: Rhetorical of Classical Learning, outlines in his reflection on the role of classical studies in contemporary education when he considers that "the area of ​​classics can be displaced from its position as an 'elite' subject that excludes various groups (women, minorities, older students) and reinstated as a more democratic and plural subject which may help to authorize less empowered groups." (TOO, 1998, p. 15). Under this motto, we conducted this investigation, based on experiences in the classroom, on the approach to themes that, until then, were naturalized, in order to give visibility to forms of violence, prejudices, and taboos that are still present in our society, thus giving rise to a reinterpretation of myths that prioritizes the citizenship education of new generations.
“Who Said Black People Have No Place?”: The First Generation Gospel at University
With affirmative action in Brazilian universities, there has been much discussion about the change in the student body in higher education, with a greater increase of black students, especially those who are part of the first generation of their family to enter in a university. However, what they think, feel, imagine, and desire remains an open question, as no strategies for dialogue have been created to tell their stories. In this sense, based on the account of my experience with the genre of autobiography as a teacher in an extension project for black scholarship holders in the Law course, I discuss the autobiographical narratives of students as testimonies in dialogue with the song “Negro drama” by Racionais MCs, exploring its relationship with the language of rap and black theology by observing the ambivalences and tensions with the ideas of redemption and overcoming, as well as the non-compliance with pedagogical guidelines as part of a rebellion against and in the university that occurs through refusal.
Anthologists in the Classroom: For a Pedagogy of Collective Making
The aim is to discuss contemporary Brazilian poetry teaching experiments carried out in the Literature course at the Universidade Federal Fluminense, in the city of Niterói - RJ, between 2017 and 2023. The experiences with undergraduate classes involved the creation of poetic anthologies by the students, initially as an assessment tool and, in the class of 2022.1, also as a course structure. Given the didactic value and normative character usually attributed to anthologies, we sought to review the pacified instrumentalization of this type of publication. To this end, pedagogical experiences required reflection on their constitution and function as support material; treat the anthology as an object of critical appreciation; incorporate the anthologist's practice, in its creative and critical strength, into teaching activity; build collective working relationships with shared readings and poem selection; as well as exploring editorial practices involved in creating poetry collections. In the process of reading, selection, organization and critical consideration of works recently published by Brazilian poets, the recognition of the partiality inherent in any anthology made it possible to destabilize the normative dimension, as well as explore the creative potential of shifting acting as a reader in towards critical work as an author and vice versa.
Thinking Behind Someone’s Back: Notes on Student Strike
What act inaugurates a class? More than just authorized speech, the gesture that originates and sustains this process is the posture of those involved. Designating both bodily configuration and psychological disposition, posture operates silently, dynamically, and heterogeneously within a study space. We propose to consider a brief history of postures in literary studies. To do this, we will begin, in reverse, with images of school and university occupations where desks and chairs are contested and (mis)used. Thus, considering the demand for alternative ways to place and constitute bodies (students, teachers, staff, bibliographic), we will explore the specific experience of insurgent learning during strikes and student workshops that transcend the classroom, asserting their presence from the outside.