LIBERAL IDEALS AND COMPARATIVISM IN SÃO PAULO LAW COLLEGE LITERARY CRITICISM IN THE 19TH CENTURY

Abstract

The liberal spirit has existed in São Paulo Law College since its beginning. The ideal of its creation sought to show a new image to the Brazilian empire, built by the Southern politicians: a “scholar’ republic”, according to José Bonifácio, instead of the old image of the North, exporter of agriculture products. That project circulated since the participation of the delegates from São Paulo in the Cortes of Lisbon, but it consolidated only after a Brazilian constituent Assembly, in the post-independence period. Considering that liberal tradition at Law College in the 19th century, this paper discusses the academic reception to the earliest comparative studies that appeared there through European periodicals and translations in the mid 19th century. That kind of study came mostly from France and it was developed by the chair of foreign literatures, created in Paris, in 1830. It’s important to highlight the fact that foreign literature studies were based, in general, on liberal ideologies, since they were guided by cosmopolitanism, by a desire of free interactions and by the belief of impossibility of cultural isolation and of maintenance of the essences  of each literature. The scholars-critics sought diversifying the debate around the constitution of Brazilian literature, mixing comparativism and liberalism. Besides that, they also used the freedom of being students and being far from the Empire political center.