LETTERATURA DI IMMIGRATI: POETIC COMPOSITIONS PUBLISHED IN THE ITALIAN PRESS BELO-HORIZONTINA IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY

Abstract

As a result of the construction of Belo Horizonte, which began in the last years of the 19th century, there was an intense flow of immigrants of Italian origin to the new capital of the state. In this context, a relevant socio-cultural manifestation was the emergence of press periodicals focused on the immigrant community itself, in order to constitute means of sociability among its members and, somehow, to maintain its cultural identity. Several of these journals were preserved thanks to the Linhares Collection, currently maintained by the Federal University of Minas Gerais, which contains editions that circulated in Belo Horizonte between 1895 and 1954. The main objectives of this work are to compile, document and briefly analyze poetic compositions published in what may be called the Italian belo-horizontine press of the early 20th century. The entire poetic production published in editions of the periodicals, predominantly in Italian, that are included in the Linhares Collection was collected and examined, with emphasis on that produced by immigrants in Minas Gerais. Thus, we made public the poetic activity, generally amateur, of the Italians who constituted the state, thus contributing to the dissemination of literary manifestations of immigrant communities in Brazil.