Ethos and persuasion in De Rusticis Brasiliae Rebus

In this paper, we propose a reconstruction of the poetical and technical conditions under which the De Rusticis Brasiliae Rebus, a didactic poem by the jesuit José Rodrigues de Melo, was composed. Taking into consideration its historical particularities, we propose to read the text as an artifact from a specific discursive universe in which it is rooted and with which it dialogues, based on the Rhetorical persuasive principles, and in conformation to a poetic genre, in this case, the didactic. We observe how reading it according to the rhetorical precepts that regulated what we now call literary production may shine a light upon the mechanisms through which the text positions itself in the genre of didactic poetry, and through which the author participates in the fierce quarrel between the newly-established national states and the international and universalizing Society of Jesus.