Transatlantic Modernisms: Portugal and Brazil

While the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century saw Portuguese and Brazilian writers and intellectuals reaffirm transatlantic cultural and literary ties, critics have tended to disassociate Portuguese and Brazilian modernist movements. This essay questions this cultural rupture of the literary ties and tries to show that while the nature of Luso-Brazilian cultural relations has evolved, literary and intellectual exchanges have been continuous, influencing conceptions in both countries of national and cultural identities. The Orpheu group and other important intellectual and literary figures of the period, both Portuguese and Brazilian, were not averse to a Luso-Brazilian intellectual endeavor, but conceived their modernist and avant-garde projects as joint efforts with platforms and aesthetic goals that would have a transatlantic impact. This paper reevaluates the links between Portuguese and Brazilian early modernist movements, using some productive juxtapositions to rethink Luso-Brazilian cultural exchanges at the beginning of the century.