Abstract
Nitheroy: Revista Brasiliense de sciencias, lettras, e artes (Paris, 1836), is usually taken as the starting point of Brazil’s Romantic movement. The magazine, however, was primarily concerned not with literature but with the "modernization" of a recently independent Brazil. This essay focuses on the magazine in order to understand the role of literature in early nineteenth-century Brazilian politics. Approaching Brazilian Romanticism as inherently political serves to link nineteenth-century Brazilian literature to other Latin American literary movements of the period, and a re-examination of Nitheroy helps to bridge the gap that has historically separated Brazilian and other Latin American Romantic movements.
Highlights
The magazine Nitheroy, revista Brasiliense de sciencias, lettras, e artes has a special place within nineteenth-century Brazilian literature.1 Published in 1836 in Paris by Domingos José Gonçalves de Magalhães (1811-1882), Francisco de Sales Torres Homem(1812-1876), and Manuel de Araujo Porto-Alegre (18061879), and aimed at a Brazilian audience, Nitheroy was a sign of the changes Brazil had begun to experience after its independence in 1822
Nitheroy was one of the first programmatic signs that Brazilian literature was shifting away from the neoclassical paradigms that had dominated the eighteenth century and moving toward a new imaginary based on a French Romantic mindset largely indebted to Madame de Staël (17661817) and François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848). This was an imaginary that, not by chance, emphasized Brazil’s independence, the country’s specificities, and the importance of originality or “genius” for the development of a national spirit and literature. It was in the first volume of the magazine that Gonçalves de Magalhães published his Romantic manifesto, “Ensaio sobre a história da literatura do Brasil: estudo preliminar,” which summarized the group’s impulse to modernize the country’s literature and programmatically aligned Brazilian letters with French Romanticism
It is worth noting the superficiality of these discourses that, while in a first moment reproduced the language of caesura typical of the French Revolution and of European Romanticism, soon showed themselves to be more interested in continuity; this is made apparent by their shift to a more moderate tone after the foundation of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro in 1838 and the official support of their projects by the Brazilian imperial government
Summary
The magazine Nitheroy, revista Brasiliense de sciencias, lettras, e artes has a special place within nineteenth-century Brazilian literature.1 Published in 1836 in Paris by Domingos José Gonçalves de Magalhães (1811-1882), Francisco de Sales Torres Homem(1812-1876), and Manuel de Araujo Porto-Alegre (18061879), and aimed at a Brazilian audience, Nitheroy was a sign of the changes Brazil had begun to experience after its independence in 1822. It was in the first volume of the magazine that Gonçalves de Magalhães published his Romantic manifesto, “Ensaio sobre a história da literatura do Brasil: estudo preliminar,” which summarized the group’s impulse to modernize the country’s literature and programmatically aligned Brazilian letters with French Romanticism.
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