History of Literature and Historiography Consciousness: A Dialogue Between Writing and Reception

Abstract

History of literature, like any historiographical record, due to the trends questioning the historical discourse, is now problematized. It has been revealed the necessity to give a voice to those who have been left on the fringe of the hegemonic axis and which have suffered, up to now, from a representational insufficiency, keeping these voices in a state of subalternity: a non-place in the official narratives. Thus, unlike the traditional historiography, in charge of the selection of works and authors considered worthy and representative of the letters of a nation, contemporary literary history seeks a plurivocal character, requiring a reconsideration of what one has as a canon. However, one should ask: is it possible today, even aware of all the traps of this historiographical discourse, not to create, in the attempt to “fill in” the gaps of a literary history imposed as a truth, another similar discourse? Or better: how can one approach a literary system without repeating the traditional form, which consists of an arbitrary selection of some authors and the exclusion of others, thus creating new canons and leaving the others, again, on the fringe? Is the problem of literary historiography necessarily in it, or is its receptor, who reads, understands, interprets and appropriates a given text, as shown by Paul Ricoeur or Chartier, giving it meaning also to blame for some issues, which would be associated to a non-perception of a visible historiographical awareness, which has always pointed, in the most eminent records, to the impossibility of an absolute and perfect approach?