Between literature and ideology: Brazilian criticism and the search for a national identity

This article aims to reflect about the relations between literature and ideology, taking into account discourses of Brazilian literary criticism from late 19th and early 20th centuries. The concept of literature and (dis)continuities of its formation in Brazil were discussed from a historic perspective, emphasizing the ideological aspects found in literary criticism of the period. Thus, it was concluded that the search for a national identity has not been only a guiding aspect of the Brazilian literature history itself, but also a characteristic of the literary criticism developed in the country and in the above mentioned period.