O romance histórico Jerônimo Barbalho Bezerra: gênero literário e nação no Brasil oitocentista

Abstract

The present dissertation seeks to relate inquiries from history field to the literature field, focusing on the debate about the Nation that mobilizes the public debate in the first half of the nineteenth century. This work has as source the historical novel Jerônimo Barbalho Bezerra, authored by Vicente Pereira de Carvalho Guimarães. Taken to the public in the pages of Jornal Literário e Pictorial Ostensor Brasileiro (1845-46), the work was claimed by its own author as a first of the legitimately Brazilian genre. It is tried to examine some strategies used by the narrative, that selects the Revolta da Cachaça, happened in Rio de Janeiro of 1660 as a fundacional event of the national history. The selection of this specific fact for the fictional re-elaboration reveals not only the understanding of Nation proposed by the author, but the singularity of his option for an attractive narrative form, inserted in the modern romanesque genre, of greater appeal to the reader's public. Accommodating different layers of temporality, the colonial past and nineteenth-century Brazil, the historical novel allows us to verify the convergence of several elements that expose the Brazilian cultural and political atmosphere during the period of its circulation.