Teatro sombrio: o demônio em cena nos trópicos: o papel do teatro Anchietano no processo de colonização da América portuguesa no século XVI

Abstract

The Anchietan theatre deals education, art and religion through an interesting interchange of signs and it is supposed to be one of the most relevant pedagogical instrument used by the Jesus Company in the Portuguese America throughout the XVI century. Its discourses about the Devil and his group of infernal angels had the goal, through a fear pedagogy, of promoting the Catholicism among the Indians, as well as their adaptation into the euro-Christian culture, guaranteeing, thus, the viability of the colonization of these overseas possesses belonged to the Portuguese Crown. The process of elaboration of the cultural performing, a characteristic of the meetings and battles between the European and the Indian worlds, the beginning of new models of social organization and values, started with the cultural and ethnic mixing, will be considered in the analyses of the jesuitic missionary action. In this dissertation, we will analyze these aspects within the religious play O Auto de São Lourenço by Father Jose de Anchieta.