Scholarly Articles
Academic articles, essays, and publications of historical, literary, artistic, and cultural interest.
This editorial space preserves and shares research, intellectual production, and cultural records connected to the Academy. Contributions in other languages may be translated for international dissemination.
Academic Articles
The Reader of Time: "Midnight Mass", by Machado de Assis
Rio, May 1894: a reader opens the magazine and finds a new story by Machado. It is printed here in full — a conversation the narrator never understood.
The Reader of Time: News of the Drought in Ceará, July 1877
Letters from the interior of Ceará, printed in Rio in July 1877: 4,619 migrants counted on a single road, families eating wild plants, children left behind on the way.
The Personalities of the Military Dictators After 1964 and the Country That Emerged from Them
Five men, twenty-one years, and a machine of repression that outgrew each of them. A study of character, and of what character does when it holds absolute power.
The Marquis of Tamandaré, the Old Sailor
In 1848, off Liverpool, a Brazilian commander threw himself into the rescue of an emigrant ship bound for Boston. He refused the reward, and asked for no military honors at his ow…
The Middle Ages and Their Military Monastic Orders
Warrior monks who invented banking, founded states in Palestine, and ended as a state of their own on the Baltic: the Templars and the Teutonic Knights.
The Reader of Time: The Last Farewell to Dom Pedro II in Paris
Rio, 1892: a French newspaper arrives with the Emperor's funeral on its cover. Republican France honored him; his own country sent no one.
Dona Leopoldina, an Extraordinary Woman
An Austrian archduchess convened the council that decided Brazil should separate from Portugal, and wrote to her husband: "The fruit is ripe; pick it now."
The Reader of Time: Preparations for O Guarani
Rio, December 2, 1870: the night a Brazilian novel, turned into Italian opera and applauded at La Scala, finally opened at home — on the Emperor's birthday.
The Emperors of Brazil and Freemasonry
Pedro I was a Grand Master; Pedro II refused the Vatican's demand to punish Masons. The constitutional gap that made both possible — and the "Religious Question" that helped toppl…
The Reader of Time: A Moreninha
Rio, 1885: a wife plans a trip to Paquetá because of a novel — and explains why the Court once summered on an island called the Isle of Loves.
The Dezembrada: The December Campaign That Decided the Paraguayan War
"Follow me, all who are Brazilian!" In under a month of December 1868, Caxias crossed the Chaco marshes and broke what remained of López's army.
The Art of Pedro Américo
The Battle of Avaí, seen beside the Battle of Austerlitz: two vast history paintings, two palettes, and what a painter chooses to do with the suffering of thousands.