A missão da missiva: a epistolografia negocial de Antônio Vieira no Maranhão e Grão-Pará (1651-1661)

Abstract

The thesis presented here discussed the letters written by Padre Antônio Vieira (1608-1697) during the mission of this Jesuit priest in the old Brazilian state of Maranhão e Grão-Pará. In the first chapter, relevant theoretical aspects are introduced using already established critical literature to determine different theoretical stances depending on whether the analyses in question observed the corpus formed by all letters written by Vieira or only focused on a specific excerpt of said corpus. The second part of this thesis aims to uncover information about epistolary rethoric and its appropriation by Jesuits, using observations about letters written by Vieira and other authors in moments that may be different, but were brought closer together by the use of a practice that went beyond their time. In the third and last chapter, there is a textual analysis of the letters written by Vieira from 1651 to 1661, period in which he was the Superior of the Missions in Maranhão and Grão-Pará. The reunion of these chapters forms a piece whose conclusions indicate the character of negotiation that can be perceived in the letters that formed the corpus of this research.