Vovô Joãozinho with a pacifier

Correspondence from Guimarães Rosa to Vera Ooó and new visions about children in the 20th century

Abstract

Between September 1966 and November 1967, João Guimarães Rosa, in the role of Vovô Joãozinho, sent postcards to their youngest granddaughters, Beatriz Helena and Vera Lucia Tess (Ooó), who lived with their family in São Paulo, inviting them to spend time with their grandparents in Rio de Janeiro. This correspondence was published in 2003 in the book “Ooó do vovô– Correspondência de João Guimarães Rosa, vovô Joãozinho, com Vera e Beatriz Helena Tess”. This article deals with this correspondence. In our analysis we try to take that material as a historical source, since it found interesting records of adult  and children expressions in the language and time. In addition, contact with that document enabled us to an interdisciplinary dialogue with linguistics, psychology, anthropology, sociology and also took us to ask other materials related to it, such as images, interviews and literature. Theoretically sustained in the philosophical ideas about the child that was developed in the twentieth century, especially by Walter Benjamin, this interpretation aims to contribute to exemplify how that century inaugurated a way of looking at the child as someone else who can participate and breed their own culture and history.