The plantation novels of José de Alencar

A new narrative on the formation of national identity

Abstract

This article supports the hypothesis that the novels O tronco do ipê (1871) and Til (1872) are a significant reconfiguration of José Alencar’s narrative on national iden- tity in books such as O Guarani (1858) and Iracema (1865). These “plantation nov- els” were written amidst the struggle surrounding the future of slavery, in which Alencar was one of the leaders of the so-called slaveholding group in the Brazilian parliament. In order to support his argument of maintaining slave ownership and rejecting the 1871 Free Birth Law (Lei do Ventre Livre, in Portuguese), Alencar de- vised an established theory on the formation of national identity. However, this view contrasted with that of his indigenous novel, the most relevant point of support for the discussion on national identity during the Empire of Brazil. Whereas before, vast open landscapes were the scene of encounters between native people and Eu- ropeans across an ethereal and undefined timeframe, now, the enclosed space of the private slave-owning plantation was the setting for the integration and hierarchical amalgamation of the races, a process already underway that should not be artificially accelerated by abolitionist measures.