1. Introduction : designing nations -- 2. First accounts : the building blocks -- 3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the discourse of the exotic -- 4. Love in exotic places : Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie -- 5. Chateaubriand's Atala and the ready-made exotic -- 6. James Fenimore Cooper and the image of America -- 7. Nationality and the 'Indian' novels of José de Alencar -- 8. Nationality redefined, or lazy Macunaima -- 9. Conclusion : exoticism as strategy.
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 260-280) and index.
Summary
In this highly original and critically informed book, Renata R. Mautner Wasserman looks at how, during the first decades following political independence, writers in the United States and Brazil assimilated and subverted European images of an "exotic" New World to create new literatures that asserted cultural independence and defined national identity. Exotic Nations demonstrates that the language of exoticism thus became part of the New World's interpretation of its own history and natural environment.
