Attending an external demand: the problem of tradition, identity and local color as a presumed solution for the construction of Brazilian literature in 19th century

Abstract

A discussion on the criteria and decisive elements which were part of the Brazilian literary identity construction process during the nineteenth century is provided. The construction of Brazilian literary identity should be seen as a compliance process to directives given by the Portuguese and European Romanticism. By admitting the local color as a defining feature of their literature, Brazilian authors established an identity constructed out of an external differentiation, thereby giving up the formulation of a literature founded on an inner feeling of nationality. As proposed by Machado de Assis, the most important prerogatives of this inner sense of nationality would be grounded on psychology and on a slow construction of literary tradition.