were influenced by medieval and renaissance tradition, and he is best known for his theatrical production aimed at the evangelization of the natives. However, Anchieta is also famous for his two epic poems, De Beata Virgine Dei Matre and De gestis Mendi de Saa. Both poems link Anchieta to Medieval Marist epics and to the tradition of Virgil. De Beata Virgine was first written on beach sand during Anchieta’s captivity by the Tamoios Indians in 1563. After his release he reconstructed the whole epic. De gestis Mendi de Saa was dedicated to Mem de Sá (ca. 1500–72), the third Portuguese governor sent to Brazil. Mem de Sa played an instrumental role in freeing Anchieta from captivity. Unlike his epic poems, which were written in Latin, Anchieta’s lyric and verse plays were written in a combination of languages that included Tupi, Portuguese, and Spanish. They were primarily designed for presentation in Indian aldeias.
Anchieta’s plays were simple and straightforward. Since there were no formal theaters in the colony, his autos were performed in churchyards or in the central areas of small towns and Indian villages. The tropical forest was very often used as a backdrop, and the casts were always all-male and made up of local residents and natives who lived in the missions. Severino João Albuquerque, a literary critic of Brazilian and Latin American drama, has observed that although Anchieta’s theatre was introduced in Brazil as an instrument of indoctrination, “it had undeniable dramatic qualities” (107). Anchieta’s theatrical production consisted of tragedies written in Latin and autos based on Gil Vicente’s didactic t heater. The auto da pregação universal, written around 1567 and first published in 1672, is considered to be the first dramatic text written in Brazil. Written in a combination of Portuguese and Tupi, the auto was intended to appeal to natives and settlers alike. The auto was could also be performed in different places of the Portuguese America by changing the names of individuals and references to local events and geography. Due to the fact that early theatrical production was aimed at conversion and not publication, only a few of Anchieta’s works have survived. Of his surviving autos, Auto representado na festa de São Lourenço, written about 1583, reveals Anchieta’s talents as a playwright. According to Severino Albuquerque, Anchieta’s autos “reveal a remarkable feeling for spectacle, calling for the use of body paint, native costumes, song and dance, fights, torches, and processions” (106).
Toward the end of the sixteenth century, Bento Teixeira (1561–1600) wrote the first epic poem written in Portuguese in Brazil. Teixeira was a “New Christian,” or a descendant of converted Jews, who immigrated to Brazil as a young child and studied with the Jesuits. His epic, Prosopopéia, was written in the last years of the sixteenth century, at a time when Teixeira was being scrutinized by the Inquisition for suspicion of secretly practicing Judaism. The poem was published in Portugal in 1601, shortly after the writer had died in the jails of the Portuguese inquisition. The publication of his epic poem indicates that Bento Teixeira had connections with influential people, as the Inquisition generally prohibited the publication of texts by those persecuted as heretics. The poem was dedicated to Jerônimo de Albuquerque Coelho (1548–1618), a relative of Duarte Coelho (ca. 1485–1554), who was prestigious and influential both in Pernambuco and in Portugal. Teixeira lived in Pernambuco prior to his imprisonment by the Holy Office in Lisbon. It is possible that Teixeira dedicated the poem to Albuquerque in an attempt to gain his protection. It is also possible that Jerônimo de Albuquerque had something to do with the publication of the poem in Portugal.
Using Camões as his model, Teixeira describes the beauty, wealth, and safety that new immigrants would find in Pernambuco. He also praised the bravery of noble Portuguese men such as Albuquerque Coelho, who fought the French and the Indians in Brazil. Because Prosopopéia was modeled on Camões’s Os Lusíadas, some critics tend to see Bento Teixeira as an insignificant and mediocre poet. However, if one pays attention to the poem’s content, it is possible to detect Teixeira’s hidden message of resistance. He was persecuted because his ethnic and religious background did not fit mainstream European society. In terms of style, Bento Teixeira’s Prosopopéia can be situated at the crossroads of the renaissance and of the baroque.
In the seventeenth century, the best representative of the Baroque rhetoric among the Jesuits was Antonio Vieira. Vieira was born in Lisbon in 1608 and at the age of 6 moved with his family to Bahia. At 15 he ran away from home to live with the Jesuits. At the age of 17 he was sent to study with the Jesuits in Olinda, Pernambuco, to teach rhetoric. Vieira is considered to be one of the great preachers, writers, and missionaries of the seventeenth century. He was also “a key actor in European and Ibero-American politics of the period,” as the historian Thomas M. Cohen has shown in his book António Vieira and the Missionary Church in Brazil and Portugal. Vieira’s work differs from that produced by Nóbrega and Anchieta in quantity and style. His writings consist primarily of sermons to be given in churches in Brazil and Europe. His sermons are typical examples of Spanish baroque culture, both in content and in form. Some address questions related to the political situation that he experienced in Brazil when Portugal and its colonies were part of the Spanish Empire. In 1640, Portugal once again became independent from Spain, but there was still conflict in Brazil, this time with the Dutch. His sermons after this date deal with political questions and express a sense of what he considers Portugal’s fall from divine grace. These themes are particularly obvious in his Sermão pelo bom sucesso das armas de Portugal contra as de Holanda (1640), in which he questions God for having deserted his chosen people (the Portuguese) in favor of Protestant Dutchmen.
In 1641 Vieira was sent to Lisbon as part of a delegation of Brazilians to the court of King João IV, the new monarch who had been chosen to rule the independent Lusitanian Empire. Vieira became João IV’s adviser and one of the most powerful men in Portugal. In 1652, he gave up his role as a diplomat and advisor to the King in order to return to Brazil and work among the natives in the northern region of Maranhão. Vieira and other Jesuits strongly opposed the exploitation of the natives by Portuguese settlers and colonizers. The subsequent conflicts between Jesuits and the Portuguese colonizers resulted in the expulsion of Vieira and his fellow Jesuit missionaries from Maranhão in 1661. Marked by the contradictions of the Baroque era, many of Vieira’s sermons reveal a crisis of faith and a kind of subversive disregard for religious and social orthodoxy. His open defense of subaltern groups such as the Indians of Brazil, the poor of Portugal, New Christians and Jews brought him to the attention of the Inquisition. Prohibited from preaching, he returned to Bahia in 1681 and remained there until his death in 1697.
Other writers who produced Baroque texts are the Portuguese New Christian Ambrósio Fernandes Brandão (1555–ca. 1634) and the Creoles Frei Vicente do Salvador (1564–1636?), Sebastião da Rocha Pita (1660–1739), Gregório de Matos Guerra (1636–96) and Manuel Botelho de Oliveira (1636–1711).
Brandão’s Diálogos das grandezas do Brasil (1618) seems to have been written with the purpose of attracting European immigrants to Portuguese America. The book consists of six sets of dialogues that celebrate the greatness of Brazil. Brandao establishes a dialogue between Brandonio, a long-time resident of Brazil and Alviano, a skeptical newcomer from Portugal. Gonsalves de Mello considers Brandão’s text a significant work of Brazilian literature and one of the foundational documents in the history of the Brazilian Northeast. The discussion between Brandonio and Alviano typifies the conflict that extended over several centuries between those Europeans who saw the New World as a land of innocence or promise and those who considered it savage, dangerous, and degenerate. This controversy gave rise to a vast literature on both sides of the issue, as Frederick Holden Hall observes in the introduction to the English translation of Brandão’s Dialogos das grandezas do Brasil. The book also speculates about the possible Hebrew origin of the Indians, and describes the different social groups and customs of the region. It also suggests that the immigrants who come to Brazil should not seek fast profits and return to Portugal. Instead, Brandonio argues, they should stay in Brazil and work for the benefit of the new society. An incomplete version of the Diálogos was published in Rio de Janeiro in 1930, and a complete and definitive edition was not published until 1966. This later edition also contains a detailed analysis of all theories of authorship, an account of the known facts of Brandão’s
