Gilberto Freyre antes de casa-grande & senzala: a formação político-intelectual do escritor (1918-1930)

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand how was the Gilberto Freyre's intellectual, political and moral trajectory before his consecration in 1933 with his The Masters and the Slaves. Because of previous research made for the History's course final paper, we found that the author organized a countermovement to the growing of ideological and cultural modernization that the Northeast of Brazil was experiencing in the mid-1920s, rallying almost every intellectuals of the region around the heated debate between regionalists and modernists. Thus, we analyzed if such events could have influenced him in some way in the choice of subject and in the writing of his major work. Furthermore, we also analyzed if the fact that the young Freyre have officially joined the Pernambuco government, between 1927 and 1930 as Estacio Coimbra's chief of staff, could have implemented any effective change in Pernambuco, especially in traditional-regionalistic kinds of changes. With those questions in mind, we analyzed his career since his academic education overseas, between 1918 and 1923, until his escape to exile in Portugal in 1930.