Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the representation of nature in novels by Northeastern writers Jorge Amado and Graciliano Ramos in response to the modernization process of the 1930s.

Paper long abstract:

With the re-positioning of the Portuguese Court in Rio de Janeiro in 1808, numerous European-led, scientific expeditions into Brazil's "undiscovered" territory were encouraged by the Portuguese crown. Travel reports from these expeditions, inheriting the deeply fantastical quality of medieval Europe perpetuated by centuries of European colonization, highlight a generalized view of Brazilian nature as both awe-inspiring and tameable; its indigenous inhabitants garnered respect for their ability to traverse seemingly impassable forests, yet were unequivocally labelled as inferior to the European.

While a complex of inferiority - founded upon the supposedly inferior status of Brazil's indigenous past and its mixed-race present - divided the New World from the Old, another division lay within Brazil: between the economically-booming South and the impoverished North. In light of this division, the current paper looks at the re-appropriation of the awe-inspiring quality of Brazilian nature by left-wing Northeastern novelists in response to the top-down process of modernization that took place during the 1930s under Getúlio Vargas' populist regime. In particular, it explores the juxtaposition of contrasting forces of nature - the sea in Jorge Amado's Mar Morto (1936) and drought in Graciliano Ramos' Vidas Secas (1938) - against the backdrop of the lives of the marginalized poor in Brazil's Northeastern towns and sertão.