Este trabalho tem como objetivo anotar, traduzir e comentar uma parte da obra da escritora norteamericana Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), que viveu no Brasil durante cerca de vinte anos: seus textos de caráter jornalístico relacionados ao país. O mais extenso é o livro Brazil (1962), escrito sob encomenda dos editores da revista Life. O livro foi renegado pela autora, inconformada com as intervenções dos editores, e publicado sob coautoria. O cotejo entre os originais (preservados nos arquivos de Bishop, no Vassar College), o texto publicado em 1962 e as anotações da autora em seu exemplar (preservado na Harvard University) permite apontar as similaridades e, especialmente, os importantes contrastes entre a perspectiva de Bishop e a dos editores. Uma investigação sobre o momento em que o livro surgiu na vida da autora e na história do Brasil e dos Estados Unidos auxilia a compreensão não só do texto, mas também de sua escrita e dos episódios associados à sua edição. O trabalho se completa com a tradução e a anotação de outros cinco textos, dois dos quais ainda inéditos mesmo em inglês, vestígios de um projeto abandonado por Bishop: a elaboração de um novo livro sobre o país. / The aim of this work is to annotate, translate, and comment a part of the writings by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), the North-American writer, who lived in Brazil for approximately twenty years, focusing on her journalistic texts about that country. Her largest piece is a book called Brazil (1962) which was commissioned by the editors of Life magazine. However, the book was rejected by the author who refused to accept the interventions made by the editors. As a result, they co-authored it. Comparing the original (preserved in the Bishop archives at Vassar College) with the published text allows us to compare two different views of Brazil, to highlight similarities and especially the important contrasts between them. A research on the period the book was published focused on the author\'s life, as well as on the history of both Brazil and the U.S.A. helps to understand not only the text itself, but also how it was written and the episodes associated to its edition. The present work includes five additional texts, remains of a project that was abandoned by Bishop: the making of another book on Brazil. Two of these texts have remained unpublished to date, even in English.

Ce travail présente la manière dont le regard d'Elizabeth Bishop appréhende le monde en refusant toute illusion de familiarité. Il étudie les diverses stratégies de défamiliarisation qui invitent le lecteur à redécouvrir les surprises que peuvent réserver l'ordinaire et le quotidien, ainsi que le rapport qui s'instaure entre le sujet lyrique et le monde dans ces conditions. Il s'agit d'analyser comment l'affleurement de l'étrange ou de l'informe dans le familier et l'intime permet d'accéder à une reconnaissance du soi plus ample et plus authentique. L'écriture de Bishop remet inlassablement en question la stabilité de la réalité, y compris celle du sujet, ainsi que toute notion d'acquis, ou d'acquisition dans le temps. C'est ainsi que sa voix - sa signature - se singularise et qu'elle se démarque de ses pairs, mais aussi de la société à laquelle elle appartient. Ce qui s'affirme au travers de son écriture n'est paradoxalement fait que d'incertitude et de vulnérabilité. Le sujet qui s'y forme se construit sur de l'éphémère, sur ses propres limites ; il ne peut s'appuyer que sur la découverte de l'aliénation exogène mais également endogène à laquelle il est confronté. Simultanément, cette écriture cherche des moyens de maintenir le sujet, par la résonance d'échos, par le foisonnement, la prolifération, autant de techniques qui le ramènent incessamment au manque, au vide, à la faille qu'elles sont supposées masquer. Cette thèse propose d'interroger le rapport entre perte et création dans l'œuvre de Bishop, la manière dont la création se nourrit de la perte, et dont elle entraîne le lecteur dans cette transaction, l'incluant par là-même dans le processus créatif.

[pt] A proposta desta pesquisa, informada pelo paradigma teórico dos Estudos Descritivos da Tradução, foi de estudar a representação do espaço amazônico na obra de Elizabeth Bishop com os seguintes objetivos: (i) investigar os vínculos entre os poemas e textos da autora em relação aos autores brasileiros e estrangeiros que escreveram sobre a Amazônia; e (ii) investigar de que forma a autora traduz culturalmente a imagem da Amazônia para o pólo receptor norteamericano, buscando avaliar se tais traduções desmentem, perpetuam ou geram representações culturais estereotipadas da Amazônia. Além disso, sempre que pertinente aos objetivos da pesquisa, utilizaremos outros textos de autoria de Elizabeth Bishop, objetivando demonstrar que também neles a Amazônia se faz representar. Por fim, (iii) é nossa proposta inserir os textos amazônicos de Bishop como representativos da literatura brasileira de temática amazônica que merecem ser estudados, não somente no âmbito das Letras, como também na área dos Estudos Sociais.

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979), one of the foremost modern American poets, lived in Brasil during seventeen-odd years beginning in 1951. During this time she composed the poetry collection Questions of Travel, stand-alone poems, and fragments as well as prose pieces and translations. This study builds on the work of critics such as Brett Millier and Lorrie Goldensohn who have covered Bishop’s poetry during her Brasil years. However, most American critics have lacked expertise in both Brasilian culture and the Portuguese language that influenced Bishop’s poetry. Since 2000, in contrast, Brasilian critic Paulo Henriques Britto has explored issues of translating Bishop’s poetry into Portuguese, while Maria Lúcia Martins and Regina Przybycien have examined Bishop’s Brasil poems from a Brasilian perspective. However, American and Brasilian scholars have yet to recognize Bishop’s journey of acculturation as displayed through her poetry chronologically or the importance of her belated reception by Brasilian literary and popular culture. This study argues that Bishop’s Brasil poetry reveals her gradual transformation from a tourist outsider to a cultural insider through her encounters with Brasilian history, culture, language, and politics. It encompasses Bishop’s published and unpublished Brasil poetry, including drafts from the Elizabeth Bishop Papers at Vassar College. On a secondary level, this study examines a reverse acculturation in how Brasilian popular and literary communities have increasingly focused on Bishop since her death, culminating in the 2013 film, Flores Raras (Reaching for the Moon in English). Understanding this extremely rare and sustained intercultural junction of Bishop in Brasil, a junction that no American poet has made since, adds a crucial angle to twentieth-first century transnational literary perspectives.

This dissertation discusses the way in which mid-20th century American female poets Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Sexton, and Gwendolyn Brooks addressed anxieties around seeking, keeping, and surviving home spaces while incorporating elements of formal poetic structure (including metre, stanzaic configurations, and rhyme). Susan Fraiman, in Extreme Domesticity: A View from the Margins, suggests that domestic space and practice can become sites of improvisation, rebellion, and refuge. Building on this theory, I show how form and domestic subject matter can interact to signify active responses to trauma resulting from childhood abandonment, physical/sexual abuse, homophobia, madness, and systemic racism. I argue that poetic form at its most effective does not function as an homage to either patriarchal canonical models of restraint or craftspersonship but animates the work from the inside out and effectively creates poem-spaces that are metaphorical “homes” rather than “houses”.   My work adds to the fields of American poetry and prosodic scholarship by incorporating close reading techniques that neither follow New Criticism mandates that privilege authorial choice/structural integrity over biographical and sociopolitical resonances nor assign specific meaning to how form is used. Instead, this project encourages readers, students of poetry, and practitioners to rethink how formal structures in poetic work can emerge from and engage with the highly personal and how the implementation of formal technique can potentially offer shelter and a means of articulating trauma and resistance whilst extending into the public sphere (either thematically or through the vehicle of performance) to offer intimacy and forge community. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The mid-20th century American female poets Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Sexton, and Gwendolyn Brooks addressed anxieties around seeking, keeping, and surviving home spaces while incorporating elements of poetic form (including metre, stanzas, and rhyme). I show how form and domestic subject matter can interact to signify active responses to trauma resulting from childhood abandonment, physical/sexual abuse, homophobia, madness, and systemic racism. I argue that form at its most effective should be neither a “container”—a “house” of words—nor a sign that the poet is conservative and/or old-fashioned. Rather, I invite my readers to consider the formal poem as a potential “home” in which the structure becomes an extension of the inner personal forces that animate it, helping it to offer shelter and a means of resistance to the writer and reader/listener, as well as forge connections in the public sphere, both thematically and in performance.