Brazilian literary critics have strengthened the idea that regionalism – in our
literary system – would be a phenomenon, restricted to the last few decades of
the XIX century and the early years of the XX century. The current global
context could well reinforce that criterion, for fast cultural changes, as well as a
large migratory flow among countries permeate our reality. However, literary
works describing local/regional themes come into being in the Brazilian literary
system – contradicting expectations from this new worldwide scenery.To
illustrate that phenomenon, we analyze Concerto Campestre, by the Gaucho
author LuÃs Antônio de Assis Brasil. In that piece of work, regionalism emerges
as a space for the negotiation of many identities. By establishing a game of
differences, he makes it impossible for us to see regionalism as a residue of the
past. Assis Brasil rescues tradition and in doing so, he makes it possible to
bring to the present a destabilizing past. He also tells us things about today and
ourselves, undoing the opposition between local and global cultures.
