“Melodrama Bacharelesco”: a writen style in Dreyfus affair’s reception

Abstract

The initial aim of this research was to investigate if Dreyfus affair’s history – in which the jewish offi cer Alfred Dreyfus was unfaithfully accused of home betrayal – would have stimulated Brazilian’s writers. Although nothing was found here among our writers, despite the affair’s strong presence in Brazilian media,, we decided to analyze some chronicles, magazine articles and other sources in order to elaborate the reception from the notion of a common written style. This style has as the main theoretical source the melodramatic imagination by Peter Brooks (1995). After this fi rst approach, we tried to integrate another idea, specifi cally attached to Brazilian scenario: a “bacharelesque” discourse (derived from the rhetoric of the law) that is found in the majority of the analyzed texts. Finally, we tried to compose the characteristics of this hybrid, here called “melodrama bacharelesco” (bacharelesque melodrama), as an attempt to achieve a comprehensive understanding of Dreyfus affair’s reception in Brazil.