Narrator and Poet in Fagundes Varela: Anchieta ou o evangelho nas selvas (1875)

Abstract:

In his poem of epic dimensions Anchieta ou o Evangelho nas selvas (1875), Fagundes Varela stages the Brazilian missionary José de Anchieta telling the Gospel to his indigenous public. The article analizes the self-referential ideas about poetry and poets that are transmitted in the poem. The characteristics of the intradiegetic narrator Anchieta differ clearly from those of the poetical narrator in first person. Varela takes thus his distances from the historicist self-referentiality of former Romanticism and makes way towards a more individualist poetics.

Keywords:
Fagundes Varela; José de Anchieta; meta-reference; epic poetry; Romanticism