Bakhtinian Dialogism and Feminist Criticism: Contributions to the Teaching of Comparative Literature
Comparative literature and teaching. Dialogism. Feminist criticism. A vida invisível de Eurídice Gusmão. Purple hibiscu.
Studies in comparative literature have brought great contribution to this area of knowledge and grounded countless academic research over the years. In this regard, this research adds a new component to comparative studies, viz., the teaching of comparative literature, and aims to find out at what extent the heterodiscourse related to women in a patriarchal/male chauvinist society is represented in the novels A vida invisível de Eurídice Gusmão (2016), written by Brazilian author Martha Batalha, and Purple hibiscus (2003), written by Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie, the corpus of this research. Moreover, it seeks to understand how this comparative/dialogical study contributes to the area of comparative literature teaching. These works, which are analyzed from the perspective of the theory of dialogism of the Bakhtin Circle (Bakhtin, Voloshinov, Medvedev) in dialogue with feminist criticism, reflect and refract the position of women in contemporary societies as the main characters of the novels are placed in positions of inferiority. Methodologically, this bibliographical research follows Voloshinov’s orientation that the analysis of a text starts from the text and reaches the context of small time and great time. The results of this comparative/dialogical study between the novels will bring reflections on the dialogue between dialogism and feminist criticism as well as the teaching of comparative literature per se.