"Naquele tempo, e talvez que ainda hoje”

A ironia do recuo histórico de Memórias de um sargento de milícias

Abstract

“It was back in the time of the king”: the opening of Memoirs of a Militia Sergeant, published between 1852 and 1853, sets the novel’s action in a specific historical context, that of the transfer of the Portuguese court to Rio de Janeiro, under the rule of d. João, in 1808. This fact partially justify the initial critical reception of Manuel Antônio de Almeida’s novel, which was to consider it a historical novel or a chronicle of past customs (Castro, 2013). In his influential essay “Dialectic of Roguery”, Antonio Candido (2023), in turn, suggests that the treatment of the past in Memoirs more closely resemble the logic of fairy tales, as if the “time of the king” belonged to a mythological past. More recently (Chauvin, 2006), there are those who argue that the historical retreat is a strategic resource adopted by the author in order to criticize his own time without suffering reprisals. This article proposes a reading in that sense, adding, however, that the historical retreat, constantly ironized by the narrator, is not a mere subterfuge, but rather a fundamental component for the novel's objectives: to show that Brazil, despite recent changes, remained the same.