Between diplomacy and letters: a sketch of Manuel de Oliveira Lima's search for a Brazilian identity

Abstract

Manuel de Oliveira Lima as an important diplomat of the First Republic in Brazil reflects on an individual, national, and universal plane the convergence of politics and literature. His writing demonstrates an explicit attempt to construct a national identity that emanates not only between literature and diplomacy, but also between the personal and the historical, as well as, the foreign and the national. This paper analyzes brief examples of his criticism, personal correspondence, and fiction that demonstrate the convergence of these fields.