In the footsteps of the imagination: literature and history in Gabriela, cravo e canela by Jorge Amado

Abstract

This article aims to analyze how the historical context of Ilhéus, in the interior of Bahia, during the 1920s, appears in Jorge Amado's Gabriela, cravo e canela (1958). The main objective is to understand how history can be used by the writer to create his literary work, just as literature can be used by the historian to create the historical record of a particular era. We have adopted the notion of “imaginary” (PESAVENTO, 2006) as the main theoretical framework for discussion, in dialogue with the ideas of “ballast of the real” (CANDIDO, 2000) and “secret history” (PIGLIA, 2004). The analysis methodology seeks to provide a critical and interdisciplinary study with different references from the fields of historiography and literary studies. We highlight, ultimately, how the historical context of a period can be useful for the differentiated literary creation of writers and, in the same way, how the literature of an era can serve the also differentiated records of historians.