Neo-latin poetry in the tropics: Anchieta’s embryonic nativism in De gestis Mendi de Saa

Abstract

Anchieta sought, in De gestis Mendi de Saa, to eternalize the action of the Portuguese in Brazilian lands. Apart from this historical argument, his epic provides descriptions of the Indians and the nature that have been regarded as the starting point of nativist poetry. Such descriptions are not consensual in terms of the standpoint adopted by the poetic voice. They reveal both objective and subjective undertones. Hence, these discrepancies represent a peculiar feature of Anchieta’s nativist poetry which critics have considered as an embryonic nativism.