Nísia Floresta’s tear: Gender perspective in the Brazilian Indianist poetry

The present work is part of an ongoing research that reads the poem A lágrima de um Caeté (1849), by Nísia Floresta, (re)inserting in the context of Brazilian Indianism in the 19^th century, a literary movement from which female authorship is usually excluded by hegemonic literary historiography. The construction of the poem takes into consideration both the indigenous fate and the Praieira insurrection that took place in Pernambuco in the 19^th century. It points to the political disputes of that time and reveals not only Nísia Floresta’s affinity with the liberal principles against the conservative ones, but also her knowledge of the public debates mostly reserved for male characters on the national political scene. In addition to the evident part taken by the Praieira episode, which is very explicit on Nisia’s poem, this analysis presents archive material that reveals the writing of texts with liberal content published in periodicals of the time signed by a “Caheté”. It allows us to explore the relations that can be established between the woman writer as a public intellectual and her character, the indigenous Caeté.

KEYWORDS:
Nísia Floresta; A lágrima de um Caeté; Caheté; Indianism; Praieira