A literatura austríaca como questão para a historiografia literária alemã: a provocação formal em Heldenplatz, de Thomas Bernhard

This article is composed by two different, though articulated, moments. First we intend to discuss some aspects of the difficulties related to literary historiography nowadays, by questioning the concept itself, as well as the difficulties in establishing a History of German Literature, when we consider some Austrian contemporary authors. After that, we discuss some aspects regarding the Austrian author Thomas Bernhard´s last play, Heroes´ Square (Heldenplatz), premièred in 1988. The whole process of writing and staging was marked by the author´s design to cause an intentional scandal. As such, the very concept of the play involves its reception in a very fruitful dialectics between arts and society, and not resulting in a merely accidental provocation at the formal level. Thus, the play questions the very conception of art as something organic and self-enclosed, updating the brechtian epic tradition, decisive also for the development of the Brazilian theater, from the 50´s until the present day.