Excavating ruins: memory, frontier and the writing of History in Alfredo Taunay's narratives

Abstract

The work approaches the text The city of Mato Grosso (Vila Bela), the Guaporé River and its most illustrious victim, by Alfredo Taunay (Viscount of Taunay, published in IHGB Magazine in 1891. This text is considered as an expressive outcome of a context of renewal of historiographical perceptions, the decade that followed the proclamation of the Brazilian Republic. It seeks to understand this work as an "historical study" (the term is utilized by Taunay himself) composed by a wide variety of elements - family memory, poetry, literature, documental analysis, criticism of sources, resulting in a rich example of the possibilities of convergence between writing itself and the writing of history