“Ana Lucia Araujo directly tackles codifying European prejudice toward Latin American peoples. She valiantly champions the phrase tropical romanticism to describe the French (or, more broadly, European) vision of Brazil and South America during the nineteenth century.”—Danielle Stewart, Latin American Research Review
“Meticulously researched and comparative in scope, Brazil through French Eyes captures a nineteenth-century French traveler’s colorful interpretations of Brazil through an astute cultural lens. Biard left a comfortable life and established career at age sixty to travel to Brazil, where he remained for two years, mostly in the wilds of Espírito Santo and the tropical forest of the Amazon. In addition to offering an accomplished and engrossing biographical rendering of Biard and his Deux années au Brésil, it also presents a sweeping history of a genre—the illustrated literature of South American travel—and of its rich historical period. Araujo successfully frames her arguments around the French notion of tropical romanticism. In Araujo’s capable hands, Romantisme Tropical reaches beyond Europe’s fascination with the exotic in the nineteenth century into subsequent time periods, stretching all the way to the present by way of links to other visual media, including photography and film.”—Marguerite Harrison, Smith College
