João de Barros: A energia brasileira and the images of Portugal-Brazil in the First Republic

Abstract

This text constitutes part of my doctoral thesis in history, which sought to recover the route of recognized Republican Portuguese writer-citizen, poet, educator and publicist João de Barros (1881-1960) as protagonist of the campaign for strengthening Luso-Brazilian culture in the years 1912 to 1922. In this article, I analyze the poet’s impressions of Brazil, after his first stay in the country. His first writings about Brazilian education, urban reforms in Rio de Janeiro, contact with intellectuals, mainly João do Rio appear in A Energia Brasileira (1913). The main topics discussed by Barros in this work which depict a state of falling in love with the Brazilian way of life, the cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and its people, inaugurate the Luso-Brazilian cultural campaign