The Literary Canon Question in a Diplomatic Oral Exam
In an oral examination, the candidate is asked to compare how two Brazilian novels treat the relationship between the sertão and the coast as competing sources of national identity. The examiner adds a constraint: the answer must not merely summarise plots, but must show how narrative form - narration, temporal structure, and language register - produces a political argument. The candidate has read widely but tends to rely on thematic summaries and biographical context. The examiner notes that a purely thematic answer will be judged insufficient, and that the candidate has eight minutes. One novel is a regionalist work of the 1930s; the other is a modernist work of the 1920s. The candidate must also avoid anachronism, since the two works respond to different historical conjunctures.
1. How should the candidate structure the answer to satisfy the formal constraint?
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The candidate should organise the answer around three formal axes rather than plot. First, narration: who speaks, and with what authority - an omniscient narrator framing the sertão from outside versus a fragmented or interior monologue that destabilises the coastal observer's gaze. Second, temporal structure: linear, causal, evolutionary time versus mythic, cyclical, or dislocated time, each carrying a different claim about national progress. Third, language register: the stylisation of regional speech versus the experimental syntax of modernism, and what each does to the reader's distance from the represented world. The candidate should then tie each formal choice to a political argument about where national identity is located. Finally, the candidate must historicise: the 1920s modernist work intervenes in a debate about cultural modernisation and the 1930s regionalist work in a debate about social diagnosis and underdevelopment. The tested judgement is converting thematic knowledge into formal analysis under time pressure while respecting historical specificity.
2. The examiner challenges: 'Isn't comparing a 1920s and a 1930s work anachronistic?' How should the candidate respond?
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The candidate should distinguish comparison from equivalence. Comparison is legitimate if the works are placed in their distinct conjunctures and the comparison is framed as a contrast between two responses to different questions, not as a claim that they belong to the same moment. The candidate can concede that the 1930s work responds to a social and economic crisis with a diagnostic ambition, while the 1920s work responds to a cultural-modernisation debate with a formal-experimental ambition. The comparison then becomes a study of how the same geographical imaginary - the sertão as a site of authenticity or of backwardness - is recruited for different political purposes. The candidate should explicitly name the risk of reading the earlier work through the later one's concerns and show how the formal analysis guards against it. The tested skill is defending a comparative method while acknowledging its limits, rather than retreating into pure description.