Summary: | This article analyzes the relation between tradition and modernity in the comparative study of the Iberian imaginaries as carried out in Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s Visão do Paraíso (1959). Despite the difficulties in classifying such relation, my hypothesis is that it corresponds to the book’s central objective. The analysis focuses on key elements of the work’s argument, being the poles “tradition” and “modernity” discussed through a specific conception of Renaissance modernity, and articulated with other topics of Luso-Brazilian historiography, such as the debate between Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and Portuguese historian Jaime Cortesão about the myth of Ilha Brasil. The evolution of this work from its original form, as a professorship thesis submitted in 1958, to its conversion into a published book, will be analyzed as well.
|