Politics and slavery in O tronco do ipê, by José de Alencar

Author(s)

Dayana Façanha

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2014-11-17

Examining board members

Sidney Chalhoub; Robert Wayne Andrew Slenes; Daniela Magalhães da Silveira

• Advisor: Sidney Chalhoub

Abstract

This dissertation explores the relations between O tronco do ipê, a novel by José de Alencar, and the political experience of the novelist as a congressman and as former State Minister. As the novel was published in the beginning of the year of 1871, the intention was to study the parliamentary experience which preceded the writing of the novel, in 1870. As a research method we confronted O tronco do ipê with the 1870 parliamentary annals, which, in their turn, were studied at their original context, in the pages of Jornal do Commercio. The aim was to search for a more complex dialogue between the parliamentary discourses and its reverberation in the press, looking for a wide context in which to situate the literary production. The dissertation studies the ways in which Alencar¿s political experiences affected the writing of O tronco do ipê, as well as the political criticism inserted in the book. In this context it formulates a hypothesis about the appearing of the pseudonym Sênio. Moreover, the dissertation analyses the relation that Alencar¿s novel develops with the political debates about the slave emancipation in the beginning of 1870¿s, as well as the political meanings of the representations of slavery and slave characters in O tronco do ipê (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 12/04976-0 - Between the lines of O tronco do Ipê: political and social debates during slavery, 1867-1870
• Grantee: Dayana Façanha de Carvalho
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master