Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

‘Amansar’ o selvagem edénico: a retórica do achamento do Brasil na Carta de Pêro Vaz de Caminha

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 30; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1179/174581512x13299097529352

1745-8153

Rogério Miguel Puga,

Literature, Culture, and Criticism

In 1500 the fleet of Admiral Pedro Álvares Cabral discovers the land of Vera Cruz (True Cross), which would later be called Brazil. Facing a vast and wild territory inhabited by natives represented as kind and naive, the scribe Pêro Vaz de Caminha presents King Manuel I with images of an exotic and fertile territory where everything is abundant, and of edenic freedom and innocence. This same space is represented as waiting to be discovered by the Portuguese, and, through the rhetoric of the discovery, Caminha advises the king to colonize the territory and to convert its inhabitants, compared to fugitive birds and wild animals which must be tamed, an image I will deal with throughout this article.