Arabic and Afro-Islamic sources of 19th century literature: the cases of Gonçalves Dias, Castro Alves and Machado de Assis

• Grant number: 23/16601-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: August 01, 2024
• End date: July 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Comparative Literature
• Principal Investigator: Michel Sleiman
• Grantee: Fernanda Pereira Mendes
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims to highlight the use of Arabic and Afro-Islamic literary sources by 19th centurywriters, through a comparative study of them with selected works by Gonçalves Dias, Castro Alvesand Machado de Assis. In these works, there are mentions of Islamic culture that indicateknowledge of texts - canonical and literary - translated by European authors that influencedBrazilian literary production or that were spread in Brazil by Muslim Africans brought as slavesfrom the 18th century onwards. The Afro-Islamic literary legacy has recently been reconstructedbased on manuscripts written by black Muslims preserved in different national collections. To date, fragments of suras from the Quran and some famous and popular poems among Muslims have been identified, among other texts recited by black people, slaves and freedmen, in rituals andreligious celebrations. The translations of the Arabic legacy by European writers are known byBrazilian literary critics: we are talking about names like Victor Hugo and Goethe, to name themost famous examples of a broad phenomenon of use of Arabic and Islamic material that markedthe intellectual production of 19th century Europe as a whole. However, there are no specificstudies on the reception of these translations by Brazilian writers, and the mentions they make ofArabic and Islamic culture in their works have been considered mere imitations of European ones.Less considered is the possible literary use of the Afro-Islamic textual legacy, transmitted, mostlikely, through interactions between writers and black Muslims, slaves or freedmen. It is worthnoting that orality and, above all, translations occupy a privileged place in studies on the reception of Islamic literature in the West.