Concepts of Literature in the Criticism of Otto Maria Carpeaux

Abstract

First, this paper aims to contribute in some way to the current movement to rehabilitate the intellectual figure and critical work of Otto Maria Carpeaux (1900-1978), whose work remained unjustifiably ostracized for a long period after his death, but has received deserved attention in recent years, as can be attested by the current reissues it has received. More specifically, our objective is to briefly present the results of a research that was nothing more than an attempt to circumscribe certain ideas about the essence of literature that the famous Austro-Brazilian critic developed, albeit unsystematically, at certain moments in his literary criticism and historiography that we consider to be among the most perceptive. Our intention was to carry out an exercise of understanding on philosophical, that is, conceptual, bases, at the end of which we arrived at a set―exiguous, it is true, although it is a beginning―of “concepts of literature”, namely: 1) metaphysical disposition of the spirit; 2) irony and pessimism; 3) logically creative imagination; 4) cosmic construction; 5) concrete reality and abstract reality; 6) political expression; 7) social essence and intellectual essence; 8) historicity and totality; 9) disinterest and non-currentness; 10) stylistic will.