EDUCAÇÃO E LITERATURA

O PROFESSOR E POETA BENTO TEIXEIRA ENTRE A HERESIA E A CENSURA

Abstract

This article is an attempt to delineate the profile of the first Brazilian poet, Bento Teixeira, author of the famous epic poem ‘Prosopopéia’, published in 1601. What few people know is that Bento Teixeira, besides being the first writer to have verses published in block letter, in Brazil, was also the first “laic” educator, New-Christian, not engaged to the Catholic Church to teach/ administer classes as a private professor of Latin, Greek, Mathematics and Philosophy. In a time that the sharp scissors of the Inquisition would cut off words and heads, Bento Teixeira was not frightened or intimidated: he translated parts of the Bible into Portuguese, defamed the Virgin Mary, cursed the Christianity, and distributed erotic books among his students. In that way, revisiting the life and the work of that heretic thinker of the sixteenth century helps us to reconstruct some fragments of the immense mosaic that is Brazil in the colonial period.