Através do Atlântico

Abstract

This article addresses the importance of the Portuguese language to Brazilian and Portuguese nationalism, focusing on the debate among writers and grammarians during the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. In both countries, the question of national language reflected anxieties about each nation’s role in a broader civilizing project; in Brazil, concerns were expressed about race and progress, while, in Portugal, preoccupations with decadence and tradition came to the fore. An intense dialogue emerged between the two nations’ literary communities that began when the idea was raised on both sides of the Atlantic that the future of the Portuguese language belonged to Brazil and led, eventually, to a more palpable compromise in which the two nations defended their common cultural roots.