The article compares the roles that literary critic Moysés Vellinho and author Érico Veríssimo played in affirming intellectual legitimacy in a period when the Brazilian cultural context was marked by the notion of 'province-nation,' focusing on 1930 to 1964. These two figures were chosen because they were protagonists on both the regional and national cultural stages during this time. The meaning of their texts is examined against the backdrop of the social space that produced them: a society that was witnessing both the institutionalization of the university and the start of specialization within the humanities, as well as the expansion of the literature market and the re-interpretation of Rio Grande do Sul regionalism.
intellectuals; historiography; regionalism; Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)