O GUARANI (1857), A NOVEL BETWEEN INDIANISM AND ETHNOGRAPHY

Abstract

The Indian literary production was in constant dialogue with history, by referencing past events and exalting nature and the Indian. Under this prism, José de Alencar (1829-1877) published O Guarani (1857), a novel that narrated the relationship between the Goitacá Indian Peri and the Portuguese family Mariz in the 17th century. As a historical novel, it was based on extensive documentary research, with emphasis on the scrutiny of Gabriel Soares de Sousa's Tratado Descritivo do Brasil em 1587. The objective of this study is to analyze how Alencar appropriated the colonial writers for the figuration of the Indian in O Guarani. By mobilizing the chronicles of Soares de Sousa and Simão de Vasconcellos, as well as the historical text of Balthazar da Silva Lisboa, Alencar brought his novel closer to the 19th century historical-ethnographic practice, using the colonial descriptions of the Tupinambá to parameterize the habits and customs of the Goitacá and Aimoré, a choice that had an impact on the description of Peri as a tall and perceptive indigenous man. This ethnographic gesture made it possible to integrate the indigenous populations of Brazil's colonial past and to inscribe a written culture based on the elaboration of a national rhetoric.