WBrazilian literature is the literature written in the Portuguese language by Brazilians or in Brazil, including works written prior to the country's independence in 1822. Throughout its early years, literature from Brazil followed the literary trends of Portugal, whereas gradually shifting to a different and authentic writing style in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, in the search for truly Brazilian themes and use of Brazilian forms.
WAcademia Brasileira de Letras (ABL) is a Brazilian literary non-profit society established at the end of the 19th century. The first president, Machado de Assis, declared its foundation on December 15, 1896, with the by-laws being passed on January 28, 1897. On July 20 of the same year, the academy started its operation.
WThe Academia Paulista de Letras is a non-profit organization with the objective of promoting Brazilian literature. The Academia Paulista de Letras was founded on November 27, 1909 by Joaquim José de Carvalho, who served as the organization's first Secretary General.
WIn his letter to Manuel I of Portugal, Pêro Vaz de Caminha gives what is considered by many today as being one of the most accurate accounts of what Brazil used to look like in 1500. "Arvoredo Tanto, e tamanho, e tão basto, e de tanta folhagem, que não se pode calcular", which roughly translates as "Such vastness of the enormous treeline, with abundant foliage, that is incalculable", is one of Pêro's most famous descriptions. He describes in a diary from the first journey from Portugal to Brazil and their arrival in this country. This letter is considered to be the first document of Brazilian history as much as its first literary text. The original of this 27-page document can be found in the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon.
WCondorism was a Brazilian literary movement that lasted from the mid-1860s until the early 1880s. It is a subdivision of Brazilian Romanticism, being thus called "the third phase of Brazilian Romanticism", preceded by the Indianism and the Ultra-Romanticism. Condorism was created by the poet Tobias Barreto, who was one of its most significant figures alongside Castro Alves and Pedro Luís Pereira de Sousa.
WCordel literature (from the Portuguese term, literatura de cordel, literally “string literature”, [koʁˈdɛw]) are popular and inexpensively printed booklets or pamphlets containing folk novels, poems and songs. They are produced and sold in street markets and by street vendors in Brazil, mainly in the Northeast. They are so named because they are hung from strings to display them to potential customers, and the word for rope in Portuguese is corda, from which the term cordel is derived.
WDelfina Benigna da Cunha (1791-1857) was a Brazilian poet. Her works reflected the increasing socio-political participation of Brazilian women through literary and journalistic production. da Cunha explored gender as well as imperial and national identities. She is also cited as a leading figure in the development of Gaucho literature.
WThe Festa Literária Internacional de Paraty is a literary festival held yearly since 2003 in the Brazilian city of Paraty, in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The festival usually happens in early July; in World Cup years, FLIP happens in August.
WGaucho literature, also known as gauchesco ("gauchoesque") genre was a literary movement purporting to use the language of the gauchos, comparable to the American cowboy, and reflecting their mentality. Although earlier works have been identified as gauchoesque, the movement particularly thrived from the 1870s to 1920s in Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil after which the movement petered out, although some works continued to be written. Gauchoesque works continue to be read and studied as a significant part of Argentine literary history.
WHistoria Naturalis Brasiliae, originally written in Latin, is the first scientific work on the natural history of Brazil, written by Dutch naturalist Willem Piso and containing research done by the German scientist Georg Marcgraf, published in 1648. The work includes observations made by the German naturalist H. Gralitzio, in addition to humanist Johannes de Laet. It was dedicated to Johan Maurits, Count of Nassau, who was the patron of the project during the period of Dutch rule in Brazil.
WIndianism is a Brazilian literary and artistic movement that reached its peak during the first stages of Romanticism, though it had been present in Brazilian literature since the Baroque period.
WPaulicéia Desvairada is a collection of poems by Mário de Andrade, published in 1922. It was Andrade's second poetry collection, and his most controversial and influential. Andrade's free use of meter introduced revolutionary European modernist ideas into Brazilian poetry, which was previously strictly formal.
WThe agreste is a narrow zone of Brazil in the states of Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe and Bahia between the coastal forest zona da mata and the semiarid sertão. The agreste fades out after it reaches Rio Grande do Norte due to the break of the mountain-chain that blocks air currents from the Atlantic ocean. This barrier is what induces high rainfalls in the coastal Atlantic forest zone.
WA sertão is the "hinterland" or "backcountry". In Brazil, it refers to one of the four sub-regions of the Northeast Region of Brazil. Northeast Brazil is largely covered in a scrubby upland forest called a caatingas. Its borders are not precise. It is an economically poor region that is well-known in Brazilian culture, with a rich history and much folklore, something like the American South. The sertão is also detailed within the famous book of Brazilian literature Os sertões, which was written by the Brazilian author Euclides da Cunha.
WVersatilism is an artistic movement proposed in 2007, by Brazilian artist Denis Mandarino, from a literary manifesto, with the intention of freeing people from the expert analysis and promote the practice of art as a form of self-knowledge and spiritual enhancement. In the body of text are present the following aesthetic principles and propositions:Eternal life, the existence of God and the spirit; Untying the artistic practice of the art market and self-centeredness; The search for artistic expressions that promote humanity and society, respecting the present level of consciousness of the artist; Continuously changing level of consciousness and learning process as infinite; The absence of art competitions; Questioning the role of the art critic for the inability to assess the man his neighbor in an impartial and timeless. "New ideas are hard to identify, hard to assimilate, and only detachment may be able to evaluate them in a more open way. When a man assumes the role of giving the verdict about what artists are doing, or the society gives him this role, we are one step closer to repeat the greatest injustices that men of science, philosophy, arts and religion have suffered throughout history." -- Interview about the Versatilist Manifesto