History and fiction: The principles of representation in Alexandre Herculano and Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the relations between history and fiction by examining part of the work of two important 19th-century historians: the Portuguese Alexandre Herculano (1810-1877) and the Brazilian Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen (1816-1878). The delimitated time-space span comprehends the early phase of both historians’ production (1835-1847), a period that coincides with significant changes in the Lusitanian literate setting, as well as in that society in general. The analysis is situated in the field of studies on the history of historiography; in this sense, part of the sources supporting this study is little known in Brazil. We argue that the participation of Herculano in Portuguese literary and educational journals and the fictional and poetic writings by Varnhagen, who was settled in Lisbon at the time, far from splitting history and fictional content, show juxtapositions between different temporalities under political and moral projects then in dispute, thus showing public uses of history in a variety of forms.

Keywords: history of historiography, fiction, Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, Alexandre Herculano.