THE WRITINGS ON THE DROUGHT OF PATROCÍNIO

BETWEEN THE LETTER AND THE NOVEL IN THE LEAFLET SPACE

Abstract

Alienated from the literary canon of the nineteenth century, José do Patrocínio is only remembered as son of a slave woman and for his abolitionist fervor. This article aims to shed light on the journalistic and literary production of the writer, especially on his participation as a serial writer of Gazeta de Notícias, with the letters sent from Ceará, during the period from May to August 1878. The letters, called by the author of "Journey Towards North", are the author's report about the consequences of one year of drought in the province of Ceará. Those letters later turned into a novel, The Migrants, also published in the same newspaper. We propose to demonstrate how the letter, that even with criteria of objectivity, has characteristic elements of the figurative language, that would later be enhanced in the novel. We analyzed the process of transformation of a medium into another - newspaper to a book - and from a genre into another - letter to a novel - in an attempt to demonstrate the claim D. F. McKenzie, according to which the new genres emerge or transmute by the requirement of new readers and typographic forms that inform them.