Imperial Celebrations, Local Triumphs: The Rhetoric of Festival Accounts in the Portuguese Empire

This article analyzes festival accounts describing the ceremonial entries of Philip III into Lisbon in 1619 and of Bishop Manoel da Cruz into Mariana, Minas Gerais (Brazil), in 1749. The article compares the rhetorical strategies used to shift the object of celebration from the arriving dignitary to the city and its inhabitants. While the festive entries signal the power of a centralizing authority over local space, the festival accounts' authors seek to respond to the geographic, political, and cultural marginality with which their city has been ascribed. They do so by strategically deploying and redefining the very sign of their peripheral relationship to the geopolitical center: the use of the Spanish language in the case of the 1619 Lisbon entries, and the emphasis on distance and remoteness in the Brazilian festival account of 1749. The analysis reveals the role played by imperial locations in the articulation of local pride.