Individual diction and public intervention in “Three positive sonnets” by Joaquim Cardozo

Abstract

Due to inaccurate place that Joaquim Cardozo occupies in Brazilian literary
historiography, the appreciation of his work here will be limited to the range of possible individual expression, cut in three sonnets qualified by the same adjective: "positive". With that, the positivity of textual qualification should be converted into speculation about the sense circumstantially built in that composition, which is tripartite and unfolds in the reflection on the vocabulary of the author, notably by the use of the adjective. Thus, the three sonnets will be considered as instruments of access to the style of the author through the lexicon used. The sonnet would be the upper room through which materializes a singular expressivity, more easily identifiable by the limits of fixed form, but that should signal something of his work as a whole, where rhythm, metric, the vocabulary and the phrasing of his verses gain other outlines, already suffering interference from the other conditions. Obviously the use of fixed form by Cardozo destabilizes the sense of own sonnet, creasing on his way in the tradition.