Jorge Amado's Penn state lectures (1971): Brazilian literature, world literature

The following excerpts come from the transcription of a series of lectures Jorge Amado presented at Penn State University in 1971. They were selected to lead off a cluster of essays on Amado (1912-2001) commemorating the centenary of his birth. They have been lightly edited to remove the natural redundancy inherent to oral communication, to eliminate asides regarding technical aspects of the presentation, and to fill in the gaps in the recording process, which left inaudible portions. The lectures were introduced by Stanley Weintraub, then director of Penn State's Institute for the Arts and Humanities, and mediated by Gerald Moser, then professor of Portuguese and Lusophone literature. In these excerpts, Amado discusses Brazil through its relationship to Spanish American countries, the African continent, the United States, and parts of Western Europe, creating a broad narrative that intertwines the history of Brazilian literature with insightful notions of world literature.