Master's Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject Romance Studies - Latin American Studies, grade: 1,0, University of Bremen, language: English, abstract: Telenovelas, which are also known as novelas, are an integral part of Brazil’s culture. Especially the productions of Brazil’s biggest and most influential television network, Rede Globo (Globo network), are nationally and internationally broadcasted. Thus, novelas have become one of the major sources of worldwide impressions of Brazil (Page 1995: 455). Novelas tend also to have a great impact on their Brazilian audience. Interestingly, Indigenous people are rarely depicted in those programs, or in any other types of television programs for that matter. The subject of this master thesis is in what manner Indigenous people and languages are presented in Brazilian telenovelas, especially “A Muralha”. Several authors were source of inspiration to create this Critical Discourse Analysis, but it must be said that the most important influence was Teun van Dijk’s discourse on racism in Latin America. The first chapter of this master thesis introduces the motivations for this study and gives some general information about the Indigenous peoples and languages of Brazil. The second chapter deals with the Brazilian telenovela as a whole. Not only are its origins and plots explained, but also its socio-cultural impact. The third chapter describes the telenovela A Muralha, which was the subject of the empirical study, in its setup, production and reception by the viewers and critics. In the aforesaid chapter, there is the novela’s plot given as well as a summary of all episodes that were included in the discourse analysis and a short summary about its production and media impact. The fourth chapter focuses on the Critical Discourse Analysis. It is further divided into four subchapters. Design and Procedure of the analysis are explained in the first subchapter. The second subchapter is about how people are represented in the aforesaid telenovela. Thus, it deals with language and identity. The third subchapter issues semiotic choices and issues strategies that are used in the visual communication method of the telenovela. Results of the Critical Discourse Analysis are also included in that chapter. The fifth chapter discusses the depiction of Indigenous peoples and their cultures in Brazilian television by taking the example of A Muralha (The Great Wall). The sixth chapter gives an outlook on how the Indigenous depiction in Brazilian television will probably develop in the next few years in comparison to how it should develop.

The first comprehensive cultural history of Brazil to be written in English, Brazil Imagined: 1500 to the Present captures the role of the artistic imaginary in shaping Brazil's national identity. Analyzing representations of Brazil throughout the world, this ambitious survey demonstrates the ways in which life in one of the world's largest nations has been conceived and revised in visual arts, literature, film, and a variety of other media. Beginning with the first explorations of Brazil by the Portuguese, Darlene J. Sadlier incorporates extensive source material, including paintings, historiographies, letters, poetry, novels, architecture, and mass media to trace the nation's shifting sense of its own history. Topics include the oscillating themes of Edenic and cannibal encounters, Dutch representations of Brazil, regal constructs, the literary imaginary, Modernist utopias, "good neighbor" protocols, and filmmakers' revolutionary and dystopian images of Brazil. A magnificent panoramic study of race, imperialism, natural resources, and other themes in the Brazilian experience, this landmark work is a boon to the field.

In his book Imagining America (originally published in 1980), Peter Conrad shows how the English literary imagination over the course of a century devised for itself a contradictory series of ideal or alarming Americas which it then sets out to actualize. For Mrs Trollope, Americans are unkempt brutes, throwbacks to savagery; for H. G. Wells, they are a future race of cerebral technocrats. Oscar Wilde and Rupert Brooke want to redeem them by corrupting them with the insidious gospel of art; D. H. Lawrence wants to rescue them by fomenting revolution in their stale, sterile society. For W. H. Auden, Americans are an existential people, sad citizens of a deracinated modern world, suffering from anxiety; for Chrsitopher Isherwood, they are bland, sun-tanned Oriental angels. But there is a logic to the succession of these images, which Peter Conrads’s narrative follows. The Victorians are disturbed by America because it is not yet a society and lacks the upholstery of manners. Their modern successors, however, praise it for this very disability and find there a psychological, mystical or even psychedelic freedom denied to them by the Europe they have left behind. Imagining America is stimulating both as cultural history and literary criticism. Superbly written, it presents an argumentative tour de force in a style that is witty and diverting.