Synopses & Reviews
This is the first global study of the single most important intellectual and artistic movement in Brazilian cultural history before Modernism. The Indianist movement, under the direct patronage of the Emperor Pedro II, was a major pillar of the Empire's project of state-building, involving historians, poets, playwrights and novelists in the production of a large body of work extending over most of the nineteenth century. Tracing the parallel history of official indigenist policy and Indianist writing, Treece reveals the central role of the Indian in constructing the self-image of state and society under Empire. He aims to historicize the movement, examining it as a literary phenomenon, both with its own invented traditions and myths, and standing at the interfaces between culture and politics, between the Indian as imaginary and real.
Review
[P]rovides a valuable supplement to anthropological acccounts of the emergence of indigenismo and indianismo in Brazilian policy and literature, respectively, by focusing on literary production during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Brazil.Latin American Research Review
Synopsis
Tracing the parallel history of official indigenist policy and Indianist writing, this study explores the encounter between literature and politics in Brazil's Indianist movement from 1750 to 1889 and reveals the central role of the Indian in constructing the self-image of state and society under Empire.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [251]-266) and index.
About the Author
DAVID TREECE is Reader in Brazilian Studies and Director of the Centre for the Study of Brazilian Culture and Society, King's College London, where he has lectured since 1987.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Fall of the Jesuits and the Crisis of the Colonialist Project
Exiles of Empire: The Tragedy of Colonialism and the Romantic Indianist Utopia
Slaves and Allies: The Conservative Mythology of Integration
The Savage Strikes Back
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index