Download PDF. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content. Casa-Grande e Senzala, the seminal text by Gilberto Freyre,. Obra de Gilberto Freyre. Identifier: gilberto-freyre-casa-grande-senzala. Identifier-ark: ark:/13960/t1vd9fs7f. Ocr: ABBYY FineReader 9.0.
ABSTRACT. This article examines the intellectual origins and meaning of Gilberto Freyre’s Casa-grande. It argues that Freyre’s attack on a racial hierarchy of cultural value, and on ideas of racial purity, may be understood from four perspectives: first, as part of a long tradition of pan-American response to the Old World’s contempt for the New; second, as a claim for his region, the Northeast of Brazil, the most Africanised part of his country, of a central role in its nation’s civilization; third, as part of a broader Latin American renegotiation of the place of the indigenous and African culture in the decades after the First World War; and, lastly, as a classic modernist attempt to frame a view of universal humanity
Published in 1933, Casa-Grande e Senzala (English: The Masters and the Slaves) is a book by Gilberto Freyre, about the formation of Brazilian society. The casa-grande ('big house') refers to the slave owner's residence on a sugarcaneplantation, where whole towns were owned and managed by one man. The senzala ('slave quarters') refers to the dwellings of the black working class, where they originally worked as slaves, and later as servants.[1][2][3][4]
The book deals with race/class separation and miscegenation and is generally considered a classic of modern cultural anthropology. In Freyre's opinion, the hierarchy imposed by those in the Casa-Grande was an expression of a patriarchal society. In this book the author refutes the idea that Brazilians were an 'inferior race' because of race-mixing. He points to the positive elements that permeated Brazilian culture because of miscegenation (especially among the Portuguese, Indians, and Africans). Portugal, like Brazil, is described as being culturally and racially influenced by 'an energetic infusion of Moorish and Negro blood, the effects of which persist to this day in the Portuguese people and the Portuguese character'.[5][6]
References[edit]
^Barickman, B. J. 'Revisiting the Casa-grande: Plantation and Cane-Farming Households in Early Nineteenth-Century Bahia'. muse.jhu.edu. Retrieved 31 January 2014.
^'The Masters and the Slaves [Casa-Grande & Senzala]: A Study ...'. JSTOR2507653.Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Veracini, Lorenzo. 'A. Isfahani-Hammond: White Negritude'. h-net.org. Retrieved 31 January 2014.
^Lehmann, David. 'GILBERTO FREYRE'. connection.ebscohost.com. Retrieved 31 January 2014.
^Juan E. De Castro, Mestizo Nations: Culture, Race, and Conformity in Latin American Literature, University of Arizona Press, 2002, p.68
^Gilberto Freyre, Casa-grande E Senzala, 1933, p. 211
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