Brazilian literature - Cristo Raul

26 BRAZILIAN LITERATURE
come in through the medium of French criticism and as-
similation.^^
No two literary historians of Brazil agree upon a plan
of presentation. Fernandez Pinheiro (1872) and De
Carvalho (19 19) reduce the phases to a minimum of
three; the first, somewhat too neatly, divides them into
that of the Formative Period (XVIth through XVIIth
century), the Period of Development (XVIIIth cen-
tury), the Period of Reform (XlXth century) ; the talented
De Carvalho accepts Romero's first period, from
1500 to 1750, calling it that of Portuguese dominance,
inserts a Transition period from 1750 to t"he date of the
triumph of French Romanticism in 1830, and labels the
subsequent phase the Autonomous epoch. This is better
than Wolf's five divisions (1863) and the no less than
sixteen suggested by the restless Romero in the resume
that he wrote in 1900 for the Livro do Centenario. I
am inclined, on the whole, to favour the division sug-
gested by Romero in his Historia da Litteratura Bra-
sileira ( 1902) ^^
Period of Formation: 1500-17 50
Antonomous Development: 1 750-1 830
23 In their Compendio de Historia da Literatura Brasileira (1909, Rio,
2a edi^ao refundida) Sylvio Romero and Joao Ribeiro point out the existence
of a certain Germanism from 1870 to 1889, due chiefly to the con-
stant labours of Tobias Barreto. Italian influence is very strong in law,
and that of the United States in political organization. As will be
seen in a later chapter, the United States had, through Cooper, a share
in the "Indianism" of the Brazilian Romanticists. Our Longfellow,
Hawthorne, Whitman and Poe are well known, the latter pair through
French rather than the original channels.
2* Rio. Second edition, Revised.