Diary of the countess of Barral: transcription, translation and commentary

• Grant number: 24/14243-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: January 01, 2025
• End date: September 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Languages
• Principal Investigator: Adriana Zavaglia
• Grantee: Raul Garcia
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The research to be developed will consult the diaries of the countess de Barral (1816-1891), belonging to the collection of the Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita and José Mindlin (BBM/USP) and will investigate more closely the volume 22 of the collection, in which the Countess - at that time having already fulfilled the office of preceptor of the princesses Isabel and Leopoldina, but still close to the family of D. Pedro II and above all himself - undertook significant journey through Europe, between 1876 and 1877. The text of the notebook, written in French, will be transcribed and translated into Brazilian Portuguese. In addition, the project intends to present a commentary on the translation that allows to locate the historical character in time, introduce their biographical particularities and discuss problems foreseen both in the context of the affiliation of the text to a textual genre (diary, letter, travel notebook) as far as the translation itself (which in our view must not seek to obliterate the stylistic uniqueness of the nineteenth-century document, much less its value for historiography). All three stages of the work - transcription, translation and commentary - aim at opening this material, written by the hands of a notable figure, to the general public and historians who come to find it as a source.