Do viajante ao anfitrião: os guias turísticos de Jorge Amado e Gilberto Freyre

Abstract

This study intends to explain how the travel guides Guia Prático, Histórico e sentimental da Cidade do Recife, by Gilberto Freyre, and Bahia de Todos os Santos, by Jorge Amado, could built a kind of political and cultural project to Recife and Salvador, respectively. On this purpose, this work starts from a reflection about foreign travelers reports about Brazil and its contributions to the formation of a picturesque look at the country, a kind view that would have influenced forcefully the construction of Brazilian national identity, in the nineteenth century . Otherwise , we try to understand how Amado‘s and Freyre‘s travels would have reflected in the composition of their guides. From the travelogue, created by a writer who is also a traveller, maybe we could think about a host-writer, that offers to the turist-reader some new elements to compose the urban imagination, wich would take part of his viewing in a real visit. The itineraries proposed by the authors also have marks of their respective ideological projects, part of a specific political and cultural context, situated between the 1930s and 1940s. So, looks like the cultural regionalism and marxist ideology punctuate the travelguides of both writers. In the intertwining of all these elements, it would be possible to check the creative process behind some topics that make up the so-called order of city signs, understood as the symbolic dimension that dialogues with the physical materiality of landscaped sets and landmarks as elements wich acts in the local identity. Thus, it would be possible to understand the approach that the authors conduct of allegedly tourist elements, such as the nature and architecture of these cities destination, in a written deviation from reports and travel guides produced by then. Rather, Amado and Freyre raise the foreground human occupation of such destinations, which is realized as a source of a specific culture that values local identity.