Translating cultural paradigms: The role of the Revue Britannique for the first Brazilian fiction writers

From the 1830s on, Brazilian men of letters largely borrowed fictional and nonfictional texts from French and British magazines to publish in periodicals which they founded, directed, and/or contributed to in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The translation and publication of these texts were seen as a means of paving the way for Brazilian society towards civilization and cultural progress as Brazil was just coming out of a long period of colonization marked by severe restrictions on intellectual production. In this circulation of texts, the French magazine Revue Britannique played an important role as agent of translation of British ideas and cultural forms for Brazilians. As the French version of British narratives has strong correspondences with the first Brazilian fictional texts, this article discusses the Brazilian grounds for the selection of the Revue Britannique as a mediator of British fiction. This discussion takes into account the specific British, French, and Brazilian contexts of periodical production at the time.