Zumbi and the Quilombo de Palmares in Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Abolitionist Literature (USA, 1850s)

• Grant number: 20/11412-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2020
• End date: November 30, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of America
• Principal Investigator: Rodrigo Camargo de Godoi
• Grantee: Heitor Montenegro de Carvalho
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This Project aims at studying the literary appropriation of the historical personage Zumbi de Palmares by the Afro-American abolitionist writer and public speaker Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) in the poem Death of Zombi, the Chief of a Negro Kingdom in Latin America (1857) as well as in the literary series "Fancy Sketches" (1860). Such study is intended to understand the historical motivations behind the exaltation of an individual who lived in a place and at a time far from the author's reality. One can also speculate that Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's work produced in the late 1850's was largely influenced by the consequences of the execution of the Fugitive Slave Act (1850), having possible connections with the black abolitionist movement in the United States during the Antebellum period. The project also intends to investigate the sources that Harper might have used to get hold of both Zombi's story and the History of Palmares.