Historia magistra vitae: literate of the empire and the national history

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss relations that were established between the writing of national history and the biographical writing in nineteenth-century Brazil. Looking for references of nineteenth-century scholars redefined the problem of the appropriation those men of the letters made of tradition, since names like Cicero and Plutarch appear as a parameter of literate production when establishing a historical knowledge about a homeland. Therefore, this work looks at to the possibility of linking two elements - history and biography - which together conform to demands of nineteenth-century scholars in writing national history.