Tropical Gothic

This book associates the Brazilian novel The Guarany (1857), by José de Alencar, to the main Gothic novels that flourished in England in the second half of the eighteenth century and in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Considered a key text of Brazilian Romanticism, The Guarany is traditionally celebrated for its Indianist content. This innovative reading identifies discursive and image appropriations from English fiction particularly in regard to the sublime rhetoric (conductor of the Gothic effect) and the representation of the antagonist (lawlessness model). Acclimatised to the Brazilian context, the Gothic elements comprise a tension between the progressive ideals purported by Alencar and the Brazilian reality, marked by a quest for national identity post–emancipation. In the construction of the Brazilian identity thought out by Alencar there is the incorporation of certain specific features of the English Gothic whilst others are rejected. This study presents evidence of Gothic images in The Guarany and offers an interpretation of the meaning of a Gothic villain in a pre–republican Brazil.