“Where the Sabiá sings.” The nature in the Brazilian Romantic poetry
Abstract
This paper offers an ecocritical analysis of Brazilian Romantic poetry, illustrating how the representation of nature (specifically the sabiá and the palm tree) fulfils a political and symbolic function in the construction of national identity. The study contributes to the debate within the Environmental Humanities through a methodological approach aimed at restoring the centrality of the natural world within the diegetic dynamic and placing its textual and structural function at the heart of the investigation. By applying this perspective to certain poems by Gonçalves Dias, Casimiro de Abreu and Fagundes Varela, the article develops a hermeneutic approach that highlights how tropical flora and fauna therein featured become poetic emblems of Brazil and instruments of cultural emancipation from the colonial model.
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