DAWNS OF FREEDOM: ANALYSES OF ANTISLAVERY DISCOURSES IN BRAZILIAN ROMANTIC FICTION (1850-1870)

Abstract

This article analyzes the antislavery discourses in Brazilian Romantic prose between 1850 and 1870, exploring how literature reflected and influenced issues of race, nation, and slavery. Although Romantic prose historically marginalized the Black figure in its representations, unlike the Indigenous, some authors, such as Nísia Floresta (1855), Pinheiro Guimarães (1856), and Joaquim Manuel de Macedo (1869), questioned the continuity of slavery, its vices, and contradictions. Antislavery, however, took on various forms of critique of the institution and the representation of the enslaved, highlighting concerns about the viability of a national project in light of the massive presence of freed Africans. The discourses analyzed reveal the deep anxieties of an elite more concerned with racial homogenization and tensions than with the humanitarian cause of emancipation.