Pai Tomás no romantismo brasileiro

Abstract

The novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851-2), by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was one of the greatest literary phenomena in the 19th Century, with a remarkable impact on the Brazilian literary milieu, as we learn from the testimonies of Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, José de Alencar, Bernardo Guimarães, Machado de Assis e Joaquim Nabuco. The article gives an account of the novel’s translations into Portuguese – as early as 1853 there were three different translations already circulating in Portugal and Brazil – and of its reception in Brazil, where it had an important role in the literary representations of slaves and slavery.