Tenda dos Milagres
Encyclopedia
Tenda dos Milagres is a Brazil
ian Modernist novel
. It was written by Jorge Amado
in 1967 and published the following year. It was later adapted to a 1977 Cinema Novo
(Nouvelle Vague) film
by director/screenplay writer Nelson Pereira dos Santos.
The novel moves back and forth between events in the life of the historical hero, Pedro Archanjo, and the present. Most of the characters are types that lend themselves to the author's relentless satire. The historical setting is the colorful old Pelourinho neighborhood of the city today called Salvador (Bahia) that flows down the hill from the main plaza, where Archanjo works as a lowly runner at the School of Medicine adjacent to the cathedral. The place of the title is the home of the hero and his best friend, Lidio Corro, which also serves as barber shop, cultural center, print shop and artist's studio. The historical sections explore Afro-Brazilian culture and racial discrimination. Author Jorge Amado once declared that "Brazil is a racial democracy," and the novel is consistent with that belief, because he situates all racism in the past.
The hero's male children are all over the city, but he is father to none. They call him "godfather," and he takes one of his "godchildren," Tadeu, under his wing to help him pursue an engineering degree. The womanizing of the hero serves to highlight the belief of both Pedro Archanjo and the novel's author that uninhibited sexual passion between people of different races and colors (and the resulting mixed children) is Brazil's unique solution to racism. The theory behind this view was disseminated by Brazilian sociologist and historian Gilberto Freyre in his treatise, Casa-Grande & Senzala
(1933), translated into English as The Masters and the Slaves. A number of the female characters in the novel are highly sexualized in ways that, according to critics, represent racial stereotypes. Freyre's theory is now discredited among most Brazilian and foreign scholars of race relations, but the belief still is used by some Brazilians (mostly white men) in their denial of their country's racism.
In the face of criticism of his portrayals of women and Afro-Brazilian culture, Jorge Amado declared: "It is not a question of literary pride. It is only the certainty that no one until today had dared to look face-to-face with so much love at Bahian humanity and it's problems. No one knows better than I, who wrote them, what the weaknesses and defects of my novels are. But, by the same token, no one can measure the sacrifice they cost me, the honesty that went into their making, the disinterest and pure love that made the novelist return to his people."
Beyond Amado's treatment of women and Afro-Brazilian culture, Tent of Miracles is a powerful satire of modern Brazilian institutions, especially the mass media and parts of academia. Notably spared from the author's knife is the Brazilian military, which in 1967 was detaining, torturing and exiling some of Amado's political friends. A few scholars have suggested that the novel hides in its story a parable critical of the military dictatorship, particularly through the portrayal of a repressive but ineffectual assistant police commissioner, Pedrito Gordo. If so, the ridicule was mild, perhaps urging Brazilians to not be afraid of the regime, and so well disguised that the novel was not censored.
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian Modernist novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
. It was written by Jorge Amado
Jorge Amado
Jorge Leal Amado de Faria was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 49 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands in 1978...
in 1967 and published the following year. It was later adapted to a 1977 Cinema Novo
Cinema Novo
Cinema Novo was practised by Brazilian filmmakers in the 1950s and 1960s. In Portugal, Novo Cinema flourished after the 1960s, where it lasted, inspired by Italian Neo-Realism and the French movement of the New wave, the direct cinema techniques, and by the ideals the Carnation Revolution up to...
(Nouvelle Vague) film
Tenda dos Milagres (film)
Tenda dos Milagres is a 1977 Brazilian drama film directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos. It was entered into the 27th Berlin International Film Festival. It is based on the novel of the same name by Jorge Amado....
by director/screenplay writer Nelson Pereira dos Santos.
The book
Tent of Miracles was written three years after the military overthrew Brazilian democracy, and it is part of a series Amado called "The Bahia Novels," works exploring the region's past. The novel chronicles the chaos that results when a prominent Columbia University professor arrives in Brazil, with nothing but praise on his lips for a long-forgotten local Bahian writer and self-taught social scientist named Pedro Arcanjo. The year is 1968, which Levinson announces is the centennial of Archanjo's birth, setting of a stampede among newspaper and TV owners to figure out who Archanjo was so that they can profit from a celebration of his life. When a few people finally uncover who Arcanjo was and what he espoused, media barons and advertisers are horrified to discover that he was an Afro-Brazilian social critic, womanizer and heavy drinker who died penniless in the gutter. So, they invent their own Pedro Archanjo, which they hype in various advertising-driven events, enlisting some Brazilian academics who are as superficial and self-promoting as Levinson.The novel moves back and forth between events in the life of the historical hero, Pedro Archanjo, and the present. Most of the characters are types that lend themselves to the author's relentless satire. The historical setting is the colorful old Pelourinho neighborhood of the city today called Salvador (Bahia) that flows down the hill from the main plaza, where Archanjo works as a lowly runner at the School of Medicine adjacent to the cathedral. The place of the title is the home of the hero and his best friend, Lidio Corro, which also serves as barber shop, cultural center, print shop and artist's studio. The historical sections explore Afro-Brazilian culture and racial discrimination. Author Jorge Amado once declared that "Brazil is a racial democracy," and the novel is consistent with that belief, because he situates all racism in the past.
The hero's male children are all over the city, but he is father to none. They call him "godfather," and he takes one of his "godchildren," Tadeu, under his wing to help him pursue an engineering degree. The womanizing of the hero serves to highlight the belief of both Pedro Archanjo and the novel's author that uninhibited sexual passion between people of different races and colors (and the resulting mixed children) is Brazil's unique solution to racism. The theory behind this view was disseminated by Brazilian sociologist and historian Gilberto Freyre in his treatise, Casa-Grande & Senzala
Casa-Grande & Senzala
Published in 1933, Casa-Grande e Senzala is a book by Gilberto Freyre, about the formation of the Brazilian society. The "Casa-Grande" refers to the landlords residences in sugar plantations, where whole towns were owned and managed by one man...
(1933), translated into English as The Masters and the Slaves. A number of the female characters in the novel are highly sexualized in ways that, according to critics, represent racial stereotypes. Freyre's theory is now discredited among most Brazilian and foreign scholars of race relations, but the belief still is used by some Brazilians (mostly white men) in their denial of their country's racism.
In the face of criticism of his portrayals of women and Afro-Brazilian culture, Jorge Amado declared: "It is not a question of literary pride. It is only the certainty that no one until today had dared to look face-to-face with so much love at Bahian humanity and it's problems. No one knows better than I, who wrote them, what the weaknesses and defects of my novels are. But, by the same token, no one can measure the sacrifice they cost me, the honesty that went into their making, the disinterest and pure love that made the novelist return to his people."
Beyond Amado's treatment of women and Afro-Brazilian culture, Tent of Miracles is a powerful satire of modern Brazilian institutions, especially the mass media and parts of academia. Notably spared from the author's knife is the Brazilian military, which in 1967 was detaining, torturing and exiling some of Amado's political friends. A few scholars have suggested that the novel hides in its story a parable critical of the military dictatorship, particularly through the portrayal of a repressive but ineffectual assistant police commissioner, Pedrito Gordo. If so, the ridicule was mild, perhaps urging Brazilians to not be afraid of the regime, and so well disguised that the novel was not censored.