Heart and mind
When you take a book off the shelf and sit down comfortably to enjoy reading it, or even when you download an e-book to read on your computer or cell phone, you do this for a few reasons.
What motivated you to choose a certain book may be was your need to find answers to political and social problems. It may also be the desire to get emotionally involved with reading and extract pleasure, joy, anger, or a myriad of feelings from it.
It may also be that you have chosen a book by a writer you admire, not only for the story itself, but for the way he writes, the quality of his writing, which makes his works always beautiful and with artistic perfection.
Maybe you want to acquire new knowledge or go deeper into what you somehow already know. Finally, you may just want to relax, be entertained, enjoy your “journey” in your chosen story.
In case you had not noticed, we just went through the 5 functions of literature. Aristotle was the first thinker to discuss the functions of literature in his work Poetics, defining the three functions of literary texts: cognitive, aesthetic and cathartic.
In the current context, some studies incorporate other functions of literature, which you will learn about in detail below.
1- Political-social function
Carry out social and political critiques - as the name implies, the literary work you are reading may be describing a picture of the reality in which the writer is inserted. He can describe, criticize, ironize or satirize, the problems encountered in the society of which he is a part.
We might call this engaged literature. In this universe, issues such as racism, political corruption, wars, separatist conflicts, drought, and a multitude of political and social events can be grouped. Examples:
Morte e vida Severina (Death and life Severina) – João Cabral de Melo Neto;
Germinal – Émile Zola;
Crime e castigo (Crime and Punishment) – Fiódor Dostoivéski;
Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas) – Machado de Assis.
Excerpt from the poem Morte e Vida Severina (Death and life Severina), which was set to music by Chico Buarque de Hollanda and staged at Theater of the Catholic University of São Paulo, in the 1960s.
2- Cathartic function
Releasing emotions and feelings – the word catharsis (from the Greek catharses), means purification, purgation. Aristotle used it when he said that tragedies (theatrical performances) purify the emotions. In literature, catharsis can be a kind of emotional discharge that gives the reader or writer a certain relief from psychological or moral tension or anxiety.
When reading a particular book, you may experience extremely strong emotional situations that cause you to feel feelings of joy, anger, sadness, loneliness, fulfillment. This predominant role, of course, will differ from reader to reader.
In the case of the writer, the act of writing can be a catharsis, because he often writes to vent, to put out his tensions and to sublimate his frustrations. By experiencing the emotions and tensions transmitted by the characters in the narratives, the reader or writer would be releasing their own tensions, fears, frustrations and thus freeing themselves from these negative emotions.
The song Como Nosso Pais (Like our parents), which talks about the generation gap accentuated by the repression of the military dictatorship, was composed in the 1970s by the singer and composer Belchior and immortalized in the voice of the female singer Elis Regina. The song was released on the album Alucinação (Hallucination), became one of the greatest classics of Brazilian popular music and appears in Rolling Stones magazine among the 100 best Brazilian songs in history.
Belchior used the word “disturbing” to describe the feeling brought by the song. He described Like our parents as a bitter song, a critique of the inertia of youth, which accommodated itself when it should not and stopped questioning.
3- Aesthetic function
Generate admiration for the beauty – the main objective is to provoke admiration in the reader due to the artistic perfection with which the author works the text. You perceive and value the beauty of the work and that gives you pleasure. Parnassian poets were always looking for the beauty. They “constructed” a poem as a sculptor carves marble until his statue was perfectly finished.
Olavo Bilac – Parnassianism – due to the ability to compose poems with perfect rhyme, rhythm, and meter. In the poem Profissão de Fé (Profession of faith), he compares the work of the poet to the craftsmanship of a goldsmith in the production of a jewel.
João Guimarães Rosa – 3rd generation of Modernism – due to the ability to create a unique vocabulary and reality for his works.
Considered the greatest Brazilian writer of the 20th century, practically “reinvented” the Portuguese language. He built new words that free language from its merely utilitarian function, recovering poetic language.
His literature is a fusion of archaisms, popular culture, and the erudite world. It is mainly rural locations and their universes of poverty, always peripheral to the world of capital and the division of labor, that appear in his work.
In this excerpt from the book Manuelzão e Miguilim* you can observe characteristics of the political, social, and aesthetic functions. The book's title refers to two people, Manuel (an adult) and Miguilim (a child). Manuelzão is Manuel's nickname and Miguilim is the Miguel's nickname. Translating Guimarães Rosa's text is not easy because of the words he creates from the language of the humble people of the Brazilian countryside.
4- Cognitive function
Transmit knowledge – the main objective is the acquisition of knowledge. The writer has a personal perception (knowledge) of the reality that surrounds him and produces texts that communicate this knowledge or perception, where feeling and reason merge. The literary work, thus, expresses this intuitive and aesthetic knowledge about the reality that surrounds him.
In the poem Dois e Dois: Quatro (Two and Two: Four), the poet Ferreira Gullar reveals his knowledge about life, which, despite expressing a very personal perception, ends up presenting what most people perceive in their own lives.
5- Playful function
To entertain, relax, and involve – literature can also have the function of simply entertaining the reader, that is, entertaining and providing some kind of pleasure, such as relaxation and fun. This is the most basic function of literature, because the reader is always looking for literary texts that can involve him, that is, “trap” him.
"How many times do you lie a day? Calm down, you do not need to answer now. Only occasionally do you lie. In fact, you lie only when you have no other way. To protect the other man, preferably, the other woman. It was like that with the mother, the girlfriend, the wife, the mother-in-law. All for the good social life, for harmony in the house, for a more pleasant night with friends. You only lie, deep down, to save your people and, above all, for the good of women".
The writer Luis Fernando Veríssimo has written a series of books that approach people's daily lives in the most bizarre situations with a lot of humor and depth. It is precisely the humor that involves the reader in a relaxing and pleasant atmosphere. One of those books is The Lies Men Tell. He also wrote The Lies Women Tell.
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