Fiction, History and Memory in Menino de engenho, by Jose Lins do Rego

Abstract

Jose Lins do Rego debuted as a novelist in the Brazilian literary scene in 1932 with the publication of the novel Menino de engenho, in which the autodiegetic narrator organizes his child hood memories lived in the sugar plantation Santa Rosa, owned by his maternal grandfather, Colonel Jose Paulino, during a context characterized by the gradual decay of the northeastern mills and the appearance of a new way of working and production organized around the factories in expansion. Several biographical data related to the author's life and facts about the History of Brazil in the early twentieth century are conveyed to this novel, turning into fictionalized experiences reelaborated by memory and language. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to develop an analysis of Menino de engenho, taking into account the strait relations among Fiction, History and Memory.