Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

CARTAS CHILENAS: THE PSEUDOTRANSLATION OF TOMÁS GONZAGA

2015; Volume: 2015; Issue: 18 Linguagem: Inglês

10.17771/pucrio.tradrev.24862

1808-6195

John Milton,

Early Modern Spanish Literature

The Inconfidência Mineira of 1789 was a Brazilian independence movement in the gold mining state, or captaincy [capitania], as it was called at the time, of Minas Gerais, Brazil.The Inconfidentes were a loose group of friends and business associates, mostly coming from what Maxwell describes as the plutocracy of Minas Gerais (Maxwell 1995, p. 119), who were upset by the Derrama, the proposal made by the Portuguese Governor of the Capitania of Minas Gerais from 1783-1788, Luís Cunha de Meneses (1743-1819), to obtain the outstanding taxes that were owed to the Portuguese crown as a result of gold mining.In addition, there was considerable resistance to the autocratic habits of the Governor.Cláudio Manuel da Costa and Tomás Antônio Gonzaga, both lawyers and poets, were especially angered by the fact that Cunha Meneses took away from the magistrates the special and lucrative powers of debt collection and conceding mortgages.Tomás Antônio Gonzaga (1744-1810) was the Ouvidor [Judge] in Vila Rica.He was the son of one of the confidants of Pombal.His father had been born in Brazil and was a magistrate who had been Ouvidor in Pernambuco, and who had occupied important posts in Bahia and Porto, Portugal.Gonzaga had been named Visiting Judge [Juiz de Fora] of Beja in Portugal in 1779 and Ouvidor in Vila Rica in 1782.He was also a recognized poet (Maxwell 2005, p. 117) and was only able to publish a critique of the hated Luís Cunha de Menezes, by adapting the poemchanging the references, and pretending that he had not written it, in other words, by making it into a pseudotranslation.