Dom Pedro II's francophilia: a genetic dossier (1887 - 1891)

Abstract

The present article demonstrates the results of the investigation of a set of manuscripts belonging to the Emperor of Brazil Pedro II, specifically, a set composed by documents related to his relationship with the French language, literature and culture during the last four years of his life. The goal is to reconstitute the socio-historical panorama pertinent to the interaction between the Emperor of Brazil and the literary intellectuals with whom he interacted and who he translated from 1887 to 1891, so that one can understand how these relations influenced the access, production and circulation of the works here presented and the translations made by him during this period. With the adoption of a methodology of organization and detailing of the analyzed documents, it was possible to conclude that the Emperor accessed and translated works and authors of great prestige and circulation in the literary medium as well as works and authors characterized as marginal, showing that the genetic file constituted here is rather heterogeneous as a materialization of his francophilia.