The Romanticization of the Bucolic Genre in the Guanabara Magazine

a reading of the poems “Itaé” and “O pouso”

Abstract

This article discusses some of the strategies adopted by Antônio Joaquim de Melo and Araújo Porto Alegre in the writing of the poems “Itaé” and “O pouso”, respectively published in issues 5 and 6 (volume I) of the periodical Guanabara (1849–1856). My hypothesis is that these poems belong to the tradition of bucolic poetry, of classical heritage, but engage with fundamental themes and interests of the new Romantic literature, thus inserting themselves into the project of romanticizing classical genres initiated in the mid-1830s by the circle around the Nitheroy review. In order to support this interpretation, I outline a concise overview of this classical-romantic project and draw parallels between the two poems under study and earlier bucolic writings.