Republic and monarchy in the youth writings of Euclides da Cunha

Abstract

The work is part of a broader project aiming to critically portray the first journalistic writings of Euclides da Cunha. To this end, within the scope of this work, we look at the series “Acts and Words”, published by the newspaper A Província de São Paulo, between January 10 and 24, 1889, as a representative of the ideas, style and language that will mark the entire intellectual trajectory of Euclides da Cunha. At the time, the future author of Os Sertões had just arrived in São Paulo after the bayonet episode that cost him expulsion from the Military School and at the invitation of Júlio Mesquita, then editor of that São Paulo republican newspaper, began publishing political articles under the pseudonym Proudhon . In this series, it is already possible to perceive the Euclidean style of writing guided by dramatic language, a hallmark of all his work, through the use of a wide range of historical and philosophical-scientific references, demonstration of his broad mastery of different fields of knowledge and, through the ardent fight in favor of republican ideals, the political platform of an entire generation of Brazilian intellectuals to which Euclides da Cunha belonged. The documentary-methodological path of the work deals not only with Euclides' original texts published in the press but also with Euclidean critical fortunes such as Walnice Nogueira Galvão (2009), Olímpio de Sousa Andrade (1960) and Roberto Ventura (2003).