Abstract

Classical imagery and mythological narratives provided ready literary analogues for framing European expansion into the New World in the colonial and early modern periods. This article examines the manipulation of classical images of agricultural fecundity and Virgilian pessimism in select works of two Brazilian poets working in the neoclassical tradition during the colonial period, José Basílio da Gama (1740–95) and Inácio José de Alvarenga Peixoto (1744–93), by which both poets advance a critique of Iberian expansion into Latin America. I argue that both poets, writing in dialogue with one another, activate an especially Virgilian agricultural imagery that sets war in contradiction to agricultural production in a post-colonial critique of European imperialist expansion into Brazil. The poetry of these figures exhibits a remarkable reversal of sympathies that distinguishes South American treatment of ancient material from that of European receptions that aligned imperial Europe with the Roman empire and its traditional heroes, a comparison established in order to justify colonialist expansion into the New World.

中文翻译：

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最残酷的收成：巴西殖民时期诗歌中的维吉尔农业悲观主义

摘要

古典意象和神话叙事为在殖民时期和近代早期将欧洲扩展到新世界的框架提供了现成的文学类似物。本文考察了两位殖民地时期从事新古典主义工作的巴西诗人的精选作品中对农业生产力和维吉尔悲观主义的古典意象的操纵，即何塞·巴西里奥·达·伽马（JoséBasílioda Gama）（1740–95）和伊纳西奥·何塞·德·阿尔瓦伦加·佩克索托（1744–93） ），两位诗人都对伊比利亚向拉丁美洲的扩张提出了批评。我认为，两位诗人相互对话，激发了一种特别的维吉尔农业形象，在殖民主义之后对欧洲帝国主义向巴西的扩张进行批判的过程中，战争与农业生产背道而驰。