Academias

Academias, series of ongoing literary and scientific meetings in eighteenth-century Brazil. The first academy was created in 1724 and was called Academia Brasílica dos Esquecidos (Brazilian Academy of the Forgotten). Begun under the patronage of Viceroy Vasco Fernandes César da Meneses, it lasted until 1725. The historian Sebastião Rocha Pita and other notables in Bahian society belonged to this academy.

Until the end of the eighteenth century, almost thirty academies existed in colonial Brazil. After the 1772 reform of the University of Coimbra, where the Brazilian elite studied, these meetings became more scientific and less literary, but in either case the Brazilian academies were not so firmly established as their European counterparts. In Brazil scholars met in various towns and cities of the captaincies and wrote memoirs and proposed subjects for discussions, but their activity remained sporadic. For instance, when the count of Valadares assumed the government of the captaincy of Minas Gerais, an academy meeting took place 4 Septem-ber 1768. Cláudio Manuel da Costa (1729–1789) read a poetic work he had written especially for the event.

A more organized academy was the Academia Brasílica dos Renascidos (Brazilian Academy of the Reborn), founded in Bahia in 1759, which lasted only six months. In 1772 the viceroy, the Marqués of Lavradio (ca. 1729–1790), supported in Rio de Janeiro an "assembly or academy" whose purpose was to study the three realms of nature. It was composed of medical doctors, surgeons, botanists, chemists, and some amateurs (curiosos). However, the most important contribution by Brazilian-born scientists and scholars to the study of natural history and agriculture was due not to the local academies but to the well-established Royal Academy of Sciences in Lisbon.

See alsoBrazilian Academy of Letters .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

João Lúcio Azevedo, Novas Espanáforas: Estudos de história e literatura (1932).

José Aderaldo Castelo, ed., O movimento academicista no Brasil, 1641–1820 (1969–1978).

Massaud Moisés, História da literatura brasileira, vol. 1, Origens, barroco, arcadismo (1983).

Additional Bibliography

Silva, Joaquim Norberto de Souza e and Roberto Acízelo Quelha de Souza. História da literatura brasileira e outros ensaios. Rio de Janeiro: Zé Mario Editor: Ministerio da Cultura, Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, Departamento Nacional do Livro, 2002.

Stegagno Picchio, Luciana. História da literatura brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: Lacerda/Nova Aguilar, 2004.

                           Maria Beatriz Nizza da Silva