Um «sagrado dever» ou uma «amarga política»?: o paradisíaco Brasil de Leopoldina

Abstract

Can the correspondence contribute to a “travel literature” of Brazil, in the widest sense of the term? The letters written by “Leopoldina”, Empress of Brazil, and addressed to her family, were clearly a form of maintaining emotional links from a distance. But this correspondence also proved to be an excellent vehicle for transmitting information about Brazil, and knowledge about its nature and society, which intended to make the exoticism and strangeness of the colony, now an empire, into something comprehensible to the high aristocracy of CentralEurope. Both the affective and the cognitive aspects contributed to nurturing sentimentsof affinity and sharing that can be interpreted as a mechanism developed by the Empress toconfirm her identity.