Enlightened and romantic: the past in Euclides da Cunha’s Os sertões

The question of nation building as expressed in Os sertões is based on the ambiguous views of the past held by its author. Witnessing the formation of a Republican state, the inauguration of a modern society, and the singular traditions of sertão culture, Cunha describes a conflict between two kinds of logic that are hard to reconcile: the logic of the origin of a culture and the destiny of belonging to it, on the one hand, and the legalistic, egalitarian, rational logic of modern times.

universalism; nation building; culture; intellectuals; Euclides da Cunha; Os sertões; rebellion in the backlands; Canudos