The travel accounts and the construction of the past in the History of Brazil by Robert Southey

• Grant number: 13/06908-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: November 01, 2013
• End date: October 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Jean Marcel Carvalho França
• Grantee: Lilian Martins de Lima
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research aims to understand the process of writing the Brazilian history leaded by the English author Robert Southey. The work in three volumes (published between 1810 - 1819), entitled "History of Brazil" was a part of one more ambitious project: the writing of the portuguese empire history. To the development of his project, the English author resorted to different documentation, especially the very popular travels accounts. We dedicated our doctoral thesis to the map of the English production about the Brazilian history in D. João reign, and we realized the fundamental role that the works of some travellers played in the construction of Southey's narrative. But not only in the works of the laureate poet. In this period, the historic knowledge did not know the rigid frontiers, the travel accounts about America played a vital role: they certified the veracity or not of the information disponible about the New World. The investigation about the connections between the travel accounts and the narratives that claimed the status of history will be the objective of this post doctoral research. (AU)