The first comprehensive cultural history of Brazil to be written in English, Brazil Imagined: 1500 to the Present captures the role of the artistic imaginary in shaping Brazil's national identity. Analyzing representations of Brazil throughout the world, this ambitious survey demonstrates the ways in which life in one of the world's largest nations has been conceived and revised in visual arts, literature, film, and a variety of other media.
Beginning with the first explorations of Brazil by the Portuguese, Darlene J. Sadlier incorporates extensive source material, including paintings, historiographies, letters, poetry, novels, architecture, and mass media to trace the nation's shifting sense of its own history. Topics include the oscillating themes of Edenic and cannibal encounters, Dutch representations of Brazil, regal constructs, the literary imaginary, Modernist utopias, "good neighbor" protocols, and filmmakers' revolutionary and dystopian images of Brazil. A magnificent panoramic study of race, imperialism, natural resources, and other themes in the Brazilian experience, this landmark work is a boon to the field.
For transforming 500 years of a country's complex history into an articulate narrative, Brazil Imagined is an effort to be praised and a must-read for introductory courses on Brazil and Latin America.
Darlene J. Sadlier is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University-Bloomington. She is the author of several books on Portuguese and Brazilian literature and culture, including Nelson Pereira dos Santos.
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter One: Edenic and Cannibal Encounters
- Chapter Two: Paradise (Re)Gained: Dutch Representations of Brazil and Nativist Imaginary
- Chapter Three: Regal Brazil
- Chapter Four: The Foundations of a National Literary Imaginary
- Chapter Five: Modernist Brazil
- Chapter Six: Good Neighbor Brazil
- Chapter Seven: From Revolutionary to Dystopian Brazil on Screen
- Epilogue: Land of the Future
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
