Exotic Nations: Literature and Cultural Identity in the United States and Brazil, 1830–1930

Renata Wasserman

Published by Cornell University Press 1994

Exotic Nations

Literature and Cultural Identity in the United States and Brazil, 1830–1930

Renata Wasserman
Funded by: National Endowment for the Humanities Open Book Program

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501726057

Overview
Contents

About this book

In this highly original and critically informed book, Renata R. Mautner Wasserman looks at how, during the first decades following political independence, writers in the United States and Brazil assimilated and subverted European images of an "exotic" New World to create new literatures that asserted cultural independence and defined national identity. Exotic Nations demonstrates that the language of exoticism thus became part of the New World’s interpretation of its own history and natural environment.

Author / Editor information

Renata R. Mautner Wasserman has retired as Professor of English at Wayne State University.

Reviews

Earl E. Fitz:

Brazilian literature is slowly beginning to gain the respect and attention it so richly deserves. Interestingly, this long-overdue discovery of Brazil has largely come about as a function of Brazil’s presence as an ‘American,’ or ‘New World,’ culture. This, in fact, provides precisely the context for Renata Wasserman’s very enlightening and critically informed study, Exotic Nations. Taking a major step toward drawing Brazilian literature out of the isolation that has long plagued its recognition as a major national literature, Wasserman argues convincingly that in the crucial first decades following political independence, writers in both Brazil and the United States simultaneously assimilated and challenged European notions of the ‘exotic’ New World in a conscious effort to forge new national identities.

Erik Camayd-Freixas:

Exotic Nations is a well-documented, analytical, and yet readable account. Its original arguments and historical analyses, which dispel the myth of exoticism as a superficial by-product of romanticism and shows its importance as a discourse of identity, apply to other national literatures of the Americas.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Open Access Download PDF	ix
1. Introduction: Designing Nations Open Access Download PDF	1
2. First Accounts: The Building Blocks Open Access Download PDF	34
3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Discourse of the Exotic Open Access Download PDF	69
4. Love in Exotic Places : Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie Open Access Download PDF	101
5. Chateaubriand's Atala and the Ready-Made Exotic Open Access Download PDF	121
6. James Fenimore Cooper and the Image of America Open Access Download PDF	154
7. Nationality and the “Indian” Novels of Jose de Alencar Open Access Download PDF	186
8. Nationality Redefined, or Lazy Macunaíma Open Access Download PDF	220
9. Conclusion: Exoticism as Strategy Open Access Download PDF	244
Bibliography Open Access Download PDF	260
Index Open Access Download PDF	281

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 288
Keywords: American Studies; Literary Studies

eBook

Published: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 9781501726057