THE CANTOS OF GONÇALVES DIAS AND THE FIXATION OF HIS MEMORY AS A NATIONAL POET

Abstract

This article seeks to problematize some editorial strategies of the Maranhão poet Antônio Gonçalves Dias as mechanisms for creating a memory and an authorial identity that contributed to his establishment in the Brazilian literary pantheon. In this objective, the edition of his Cantos, a book originally published in 1857 and which brought together the three poetic works previously published by Gonçalves Dias – Primeiros Cantos (1846), Segundos Cantos (1848) and Últimos Cantos (1852) – gains particular importance for us., with the addition of some unpublished poems. The specific emphasis given to this work is due to the fact that the materiality of Gonçalves Dias' recognition as a national poet is manifested in it, with the inclusion, as a prologue, of the consecrating article that the literate portuguese Alexandre Herculano had dedicated to him. Furthermore, the Cantos were the target of one of the first disputes over the recognition of copyright in Brazil.