I nomi dei personaggi indigeni nel romanzo storico indianista di José de Alencar

In Brazil, during the XIX century, the historical romance is part of a generational program that aims to the creation of the Brazilian literature, unique and independent from the Portuguese literature, and profoundly linked to the people, seen by the intellectuals as a new race born in the tropics. José de Alencar unites effectively in his books the historical with the literary and esthetical movements of “indianism” and “nativism”, picturing the encounter of the Portuguese and the Indian as the mythical birth of the Brazilian. The names the author gives his Indian characters testify not only his will to capture the peculiar relationship of the Indians with the edenic nature, through the creation of names that function as true images, but also the anthropological and linguistic knowledge of a culture seen as being at the same level as the European. The Indian names tell also the story of the suffering and annihilation of the race and the birth of a new one.