Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística

About the publication - Southern Brazil - Volume 1

With the Atlas of Literary Representations of the Brazilian Regions, the IBGE introduces a new collection that covers the National Territory by means of a regional subdivision that associates specific knowledge of Geography with the spatial perception present in the Brazilian Literature, going beyond the conventional political and administrative subdivisions. In this way, this collection has the objective of identifying and representing, by means of maps at different scales, satellite photos and images, the Brazilian regions that have been a distinguishing element in the plot of some of the major works of national literature, in a type of mapping where identity is the key element for the individualization of the different territory segments that form the national scenario.

Atlas of Literary Representations of the Brazilian Regions  – Volume 1 (2006) – Southern Brazil

This first volume comprises the Campanha Gaúcha, Colônias, Vale do Itajaí and North of Paraná. It shows, initially, by means of texts and maps, each one of these regions in their geographic dimension, according to the regionalization defined by the IBGE itself and other Institutions, and highlighting, besides that, the cultural dimension of these territory units according to the perception about the region from a Literary perspective. This approach is expressed in selected quotes from Erico Verissimo, Cyro Martins, Simões Lopes Neto, Josué Guimarães, José Clemente Pozenato, Charles Kiefer and Alcy Cheuiche, among othersfamous writers that give visibility to Southern Brazil, which is the objective of this volume. In the Atlas, maps are also presented to locate the region that emerges from the novels, as well as photos or images. In all the texts, some regional terms referring to the territory and their appropriation process were highlighted in bold and comprised in a glossary at the end of the publication. Besides the four Brazilian regions, this publication dedicates one chapter to the area of the Jesuit Missions in Rio Grande do Sul, which is an important reference to understand a significant part of the customs and traditions of that area.