The period in the wake of the Novo Estado (New State), when revisionism took hold of historiographic production in Rio Grande do Sul, provided the context for the writings of Gilberto Freyre to acquire a greater influence among the southern intelligentsia. The article investigates the reasons for this delayed alignment with the analytic model of the Recife author. At a time marked by the rise of the social sciences and the loss in authority of historical narratives centred on the integrating role of military heroes, local historians and critics combined forces to reverse the motivating factors that had previously separated the textual production of the ‘province’ from the themes in fashion in the intellectual ‘centre’ of Brazil (Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo). This step required closing the gap between History and Folklore, meaning the latter was no longer apprehended as a branch of philology or literary regionalism, but as an area of study to be approached from a ‘sociological’ angle.
Brazilian Social Thought; Rio Grande do Sul; Folklore; Historiography; Regionalism