ABSTRACT
This paper's goal is to demonstrate how rhetorical precepts were applied to catechetical dialogues composed in Portuguese South America. It correlates Jesuit statements about the participation of Native Brazilians in the production of translations into their languages (native speech still rustles in the dialogues) with the pedestrian style of the "dialogue" genre itself. The paper endeavors to show how such correlation produced the effect of "naturalness of savage speech," and also demonstrates the lack of application of artificial composition by the priests of the Society of Jesus. Lastly, we discuss how dialogue writing appropriates native speech only as a means to include in it the sacred truths of the Catholic faith, leaving to Native Brazilians the task of ascribing such truths to themselves through repetition and internalization, as a stunt double of the catechumen in the dialogues, as its perfect reflection. In the catechetical practice, though, such reflection is blurred, as it is impossible for the native to "act" as the mimetic model that represents him in absentia.
Keywords:
epideictic rhetoric; Portuguese America; dialogues; Aristotle; Poetics.