Brazilian Romantic literature was developed in a period of intense national affirmation and under the influx of the ideas of French writer Ferdinand Denis. Author of the first Brazilian literary history, published in 1826, Denis advocated to the newly-founded nation in this book a new literary program grounded on the representation of tropical landscape as a mark of originality and nationality. Considering the pervasive presence of Denis’ ideas in Brazilian Romantic literature, this paper presents a study of the indirect and direct references to Denis’ literary proposal in some works and texts written by representative names of Brazilian literature throughout the 19th century. Beyond the resonances of Denis’ ideas, this paper points out the way some writers adapted them to Brazilian social-historical context. It also demonstrates the counter reaction of those authors who denounced the limits of such proposal of a descriptive-nationalist literature, which came to guide a large branch of Brazilian Romanticism.   -- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22409/gragoata.2017n43a772.