Background
Silva Alvarenga was born out of wedlock in Ouro Preto and was biracial. His mother was African and his father an "indigent white musician." He was raised in Minas Geras. His father"s friends encouraged his poetry and musical talents.
Silva Alvarenga was born out of wedlock in Ouro Preto and was biracial. His mother was African and his father an "indigent white musician." He was raised in Minas Geras. His father"s friends encouraged his poetry and musical talents.
In the early 1770s, he studied in Rio de Janeiro. Silva Alvarenga was able to attend the University of Coimbra in Portugal in 1776 where he studied law.
He had a life-long commitment to life-long learning and promoting civic values and educational reforms. Silva Alvarenga edited one of the first newspapers in Brazil, O Patriota. After studying in Portugal, he moved back to Brazil, where he was part of the Ouro Preto Arcady.
In 1782, he moved to Rio de Janeiro where he taught rhetoric and poetics in the position of Royal Professor.
The society discussed issues ranging from the French Revolution to religion, where some members challenged religious dogma and claimed that miracles did not exist. Because the society was considered "subversive" he was imprisoned from 1794 to 1797.
He died in Rio de Janeiro in 1814.
Many of the poems are very much part of the pastoral Arcady tradition, however, literary critics have identified "elements which foreshadow Brazilian Romanticism.".
He became a founding member of the Sociedade Literaria do Rio de Janeiro (Literary Society in Rio de Janeiro) in 1786.