The work on a footnote: footnotes on the books about indigenous peoples by José de Alencar

Abstract

This article tries to understand the footnote as a part of the literary work of José de Alencar, meaning it will see the discursive structures within the footnotes in order to gather clues about the writer's readings, while, at the same time, to see how the footnotes functioned as a means of legitimation, in earlier Brazilian historiography, the ideas of nature, indigenous peoples and nationality which this author built in his literature, particularly those works of the “indigenous cycle”. The footnotes, seen with other non fictional elements of Alencar's books, allow us to access how the ideas we find in his romances was “built”. Simultaneously, it allows us a particular entrance to the world of reading in the past, as it identifies reading practices and appropriations this author had.