Delfina Benigna da Cunha : recuperação crítica, obra poética e fixação de texto

Abstract

This thesis proposes a rereading of the South Brazilian poet Delfina Benigna da Cunha‟s work, aiming an approach based on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel‟s lyric poetry conception, and on Michael Riffaterre‟s style conception. The critic fortune recovering about Delfina‟s work, based on the Brazilian literature histories published in the XIX and XX centuries, allows us to recognize that the literature history takes a unilateral look at the work of the blind poet from São José do Norte, restricting itself almost exclusively to the suffering sentimentalist, complaining and sad aspect of her work, as a consequence of a lifetime marked by privations due to her visual disability. The general evaluations suggest that all the themes surround this suffering. This thesis defines love as the core theme of Delfina‟s poetry production. This theme singularly manifests itself as the presentation of the Primordial Love, the world‟s fundamental strength, its internal cohesion that generates life, and gives motivation and reasons to live it. Delfina emphasizes love in a tense combination with the existence poetry, originated from the sentimental plurality, which transits among the different aspects of her relationship with the world: family, country, friendship, compassion, ideology, values, gratitude, and passion, among the many motivations that compose the theme. Herein, to the development of this theme, are the Annexes that contemplate the poet‟s whole work, composed by the following titles: Poesias oferecidas às senhoras rio-grandenses) and Coleção de poesias oferecidas à Imperatriz viúva.