Memory and happiness: Paul Ricoeur’s speech sung by Elza Soares

Abstract

This work aims to investigate how the hermeneutics of the French scholar Paul Ricoeur can be perceived in the songs interpreted by Elza Soares. Furthermore, it intends, at the discursive level, to demonstrate how the artist's voice evokes a memory that must be reconstructed to promote the rewriting of history and, at the social, economic, political, and cultural levels, to allow changes that are capable of enabling a dignified life and a happier existence for the subalterns. To this end, the methodologies of textual analysis will be used aiming the reading of literary elements that compose the song, such as the construction of the persona, and themes addressed; and critical analysis, proposing a decolonial view based on Cultural Studies and, more specifically, based on the philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Thus, the purpose is to show Ricoeur's discourse being sung by Elza Soares, who uses art to construct her joyful science.