Brazilian literature
Encyclopedia
Brazilian literature is written in the Portuguese language
by Brazilians or in Brazil
, even if prior to Brazil's independence from Portugal
, in 1822. During the 20th century Brazilian literature gradually shifted to a different and more Brazilian literary use of the Portuguese language
.
(Pero Vaz de Caminha's letter). It is written by Pero Vaz de Caminha
to Manuel I of Portugal
, which contains a description of what Brazil
looked like in 1500. Journals of voyagers and descriptive treatises on "Portuguese America" dominated the literary production for the next two centuries, including well-known accounts by Jean de Léry
and Hans Staden
, whose story of his encounter with the Tupi Indians on the coast of São Paulo was extraordinarily influential for European conceptions of the New World.
A few more explicitly literary examples survive from this period, such as Basílio da Gama
's epic poem celebrating the conquest of the Missions by the Portuguese, and the work of Gregório de Mattos
, a 17th century lawyer
from Salvador who produced a sizable amount of satirical
, religious, and secular poetry
. Matos drew heavily from Baroque
influences such as the Spanish
poets Luis de Góngora
and Francisco de Quevedo
.
Neoclassicism
was widespread in Brazil during the mid-18th century, following the Italian
style. Literature was often produced by members of temporary or semi-permanent academies and most of the content was in the pastoral
genre. The most important literary centre in colonial Brazil was the prosperous Minas Gerais
region, known for its gold mines, where a thriving proto-nationalist movement had begun. The most important poets were Cláudio Manuel da Costa
, Tomás Antônio Gonzaga
, Alvarenga Peixoto
and Manuel Inácio da Silva Alvarenga
, all them involved in an uprising against the colonial power. Gonzaga and Costa were exiled to Africa as a consequence.
began influencing Brazilian poetry on a large scale, principally through the efforts of the expatriate poet Gonçalves de Magalhães
. A number of young poets, such as Casimiro de Abreu
, began experimenting with the new style soon afterward. This period produced some of the first standard works of Brazilian literature.
The key features of the literature of the new-born country are exaggerated affect, nationalism, celebration of nature and the initial introduction of colloquial language. Romantic literature soon became very popular. Novelists like Joaquim Manuel de Macedo
, Manuel Antônio de Almeida
and José de Alencar
published their works in serial
form in the newspapers and became national celebrities.
Around 1850, a transition began, centered around Álvares de Azevedo
. Azevedo's novel Noite na Taverna
(A Night at the Tavern) and his poetry, collected posthumously in Lira dos Vinte Anos
(Twenty-year-old Lyre), became influential. Azevedo was largely influenced by the poetry of Lord Byron
. This second Romantic generation was obsessed with morbidity and death.
At the same time, poets such as Castro Alves
, who wrote of the horrors of slavery (Navio Negreiro), began writing works with a specific progressive social agenda. The two trends coincided in one of the most important accomplishments of the Romantic era: the establishment of a Brazilian national identity based on Indian ancestry and the rich nature of the country. These traits first appeared in Gonçalves Dias' epic poem I-Juca Pirama
, but soon became widespread. The consolidation of this sub-genre (indigenism) is found in two famous novels by José de Alencar
: The Guarani, about a family of Portuguese colonists who took Indians as servants but were later slain by an enemy tribe, and Iracema
, about a Portuguese shipwrecked man who lives among the Indians and marries a beautiful Indian woman. Iracema is especially lyrical, opening with five paragraphs of pure free-style prose-poetry describing the title character.
writing emerged, including analysis of the indigenous people and description of the environment, in the regionalist authors (such as Franklin Távora
and João Simões Lopes Neto
). Under the influence of Naturalism
and of writers like Émile Zola
, Aluísio Azevedo
wrote O Cortiço, with characters that represent all social classes and categories of the time. Brazilian Realism was not very original at first, but it took on extraordinary importance because of Machado de Assis and Euclides da Cunha
.
Working as typesetter at a publishing house, he was soon acquainted with most of the world's literature and even managed to grasp something of English
and French
. In his early career he wrote several best-selling novels (including A Mão e a Luva and Ressurreição
) which, despite their overzealous Romanticism, already show his vivacious humour and some of his pessimism towards the conventions of society.
After being introduced to Realism
, Machado de Assis changed his style and his themes, producing some of the most remarkable prose ever written in Portuguese. The style served as the medium for his corrosive humour and his intense pessimism, which was very far from the plain conceptions of his contemporaries.
Machado's most crucial works include:
Machado was also a minor poet, writing mostly casual poetry of extraordinary correctness and beauty. His reputation as a novelist has kept his poetry in print, and recent criticism has regarded it better than that of many of his contemporaries.
was always tormented by his family problems (he was killed by his wife's lover) and had to face political opposition because of his opinions. As a freelance journalist working for O Estado de São Paulo he covered the Canudos War -- a popular revolt with some egalitarian and Christian-fundamentalist traits that took place in Bahia
in 1895-97. His stories, together with some essays he wrote about the people and the geography of the Brazilian North-East, were published in a thick volume called Os Sertões
(Rebellion in the Backlands).
In his work Cunha put forward the revolutionary thesis that the Brazilian state was a violent and foreign entity, rejected (but often tolerated) by the vast majority of the illiterate and dispossessed population, some of whom preserved beliefs and behaviours that had not changed in a thousand years or more. He discovered, for instance, that Sebastianism
was then present in the Brazilian North-East and that many medieval Portuguese rhymes, folk-tales and traditions were still kept by the coarse people of the "sertões". This population did not accept secularism
, the Republic
an government and, especially, justice of peace.
did not catch on and most authors of Realism still maintained their earlier styles and their reputations (including Machado de Assis and poet Olavo Bilac
). Some authors of this time, like Monteiro Lobato
, Lima Barreto
and Simões Lopes Neto, already show a distinctly modern character.
began in Brazil with the Week of Modern Art
, in 1922. The 1922 Generation was a nickname for the writers Mário de Andrade
(Paulicéia Desvairada
, Macunaíma
), Oswald de Andrade
(Memórias Sentimentais de João Miramar
), Manuel Bandeira
, Cassiano Ricardo
and others, all of whom combined nationalist tendencies with an interest in European modernism. Some new movements such as surrealism
were already important in Europe, and began to take hold in Brazil during this period.
was born in São Paulo
. He worked as a professor and was one of the organizers of the Week of Modern Art. He researched Brazilian folklore
and folk music
and used it in his books, avoiding the European style. His Brazilian anti-hero is Macunaíma
, a product of ethnical and cultural mixture. Andrade's interest in folklore and his use of colloquial language were extremely influential, to the point that his innovations, at first revolutionary, came to dominate Brazilian literature.
, another participant in the Week of Modern Art in 1922, worked as a journalist in São Paulo
. Born into a wealthy family, he travelled to Europe
several times. Of the generation of 1922, Oswald de Andrade best represents the rebellious characteristics of the modernist movement. He is the author of the Manifesto Antropófago (Cannibal Manifesto) (1927), in which he says it is necessary that Brazil, like a cannibal
, eat foreign culture and, in digestion
, create its own culture.
, who opposed Carlos Drummond de Andrade
's poetic modernism, and secondly the sonnets - on both the Italian and English model - of the early Vinicius de Moraes
), followed by varying doses, according to the author considered, of subjectivism, political conservatism and militant Catholicism.
Two writers from that "school" that have published after the 1950s are without a doubt already inside the canon of Brazilian literature: Clarice Lispector
, whose existentialist novels and short stories are filled with stream-of-consciousness and epiphanies, and João Guimarães Rosa
, whose experimental language has changed the face of Brazilian literature forever. His novel Grande Sertão: Veredas has been compared to James Joyce
's Ulysses
or Alfred Döblin
's Berlin Alexanderplatz
.
Following in the wake of conservative subjectivism innaugurated by the militantily Catholic novelists-cum-polemicists Octavio de Faria, Lúcio Cardoso
, Cornélio Penna and Gustavo Corção, Nelson Rodrigues
made his career as playwright and sports journalist. His plays and short stories - the latter mostly originally published as newspaper feulletons - chronicled the social mores of the 1950s and 60s; adultery and sexual pathologies in general being a major fixation of his. His sports writing describes the evolution of football
into the national passion of Brazil. He was heavily critical of the young leftists who opposed the military dictatorship after the 1964 coup; for that he was penned as right-wing and conservative. For a time heavily pro-dictatorship, he had to suffer the tragic fate of having one his sons being tortured and incarcerated for belonging to an underground guerrilla organization.
, Sérgio Sant'Anna
have written important books with these themes in the 70s, breaking new ground in Brazilian literature, up until then mostly having dealt with rural life.
New trends since the 80s have included works by authors such as João Gilberto Noll, Milton Hatoum, Bernardo Carvalho, João Almino
, Adriana Lisboa and Cristovão Tezza.
Poets such as Ferreira Gullar
and Manoel de Barros
are among the most acclaimed within literary circles in Brazil, the former had been nominated for the Nobel Prize
.
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
by Brazilians or in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, even if prior to Brazil's independence from Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, in 1822. During the 20th century Brazilian literature gradually shifted to a different and more Brazilian literary use of the Portuguese language
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
.
Colonial period
The first extant document that might be considered Brazilian literature is the Carta de Pero Vaz de CaminhaCarta de Pero Vaz de Caminha
In his letter to Manuel I of Portugal, Pêro Vaz de Caminha gives what is considered by many today as being one of the most accurate accounts of what Brazil used to look like in 1500...
(Pero Vaz de Caminha's letter). It is written by Pero Vaz de Caminha
Pêro Vaz de Caminha
Pêro Vaz de Caminha , was a Portuguese knight that accompanied Pedro Álvares Cabral to India in 1500, as a secretary to the royal factory. Caminha wrote the detailed official report of the April 1500 discovery of Brazil by Cabral's fleet...
to Manuel I of Portugal
Manuel I of Portugal
Manuel I , the Fortunate , 14th king of Portugal and the Algarves was the son of Infante Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu, , by his wife, Infanta Beatrice of Portugal...
, which contains a description of what Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
looked like in 1500. Journals of voyagers and descriptive treatises on "Portuguese America" dominated the literary production for the next two centuries, including well-known accounts by Jean de Léry
Jean de Léry
Jean de Léry was an explorer, writer and Reformed Pastor born in Lamargelle, Côte-d'Or, France. Little is known of his early life; and he might have remained unknown had he not accompanied a group of Protestants to their new colony on an island in the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil...
and Hans Staden
Hans Staden
Hans Staden was a German soldier and mariner who voyaged to South America. On one voyage, he was captured by the Tupinambá people of Brazil whom he claimed practiced cannibalism...
, whose story of his encounter with the Tupi Indians on the coast of São Paulo was extraordinarily influential for European conceptions of the New World.
A few more explicitly literary examples survive from this period, such as Basílio da Gama
Basílio da Gama
José Basílio da Gama was a Brazilian-born Portuguese poet and member of the Society of Jesus, famous for the epic poem O Uraguai...
's epic poem celebrating the conquest of the Missions by the Portuguese, and the work of Gregório de Mattos
Gregório de Mattos
Gregório de Mattos e Guerra was the most famous Colonial Brazilian Baroque poet. Although he wrote many lyrical and religious poems, he was more well-known by his satirical ones, winning because of them the nickname "Boca do Inferno" .He is the patron of the 16th chair of the Brazilian Academy of...
, a 17th century lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
from Salvador who produced a sizable amount of satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
, religious, and secular poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
. Matos drew heavily from Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
influences such as the Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
poets Luis de Góngora
Luis de Góngora
Luis de Góngora y Argote was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet. Góngora and his lifelong rival, Francisco de Quevedo, are widely considered to be the most prominent Spanish poets of their age. His style is characterized by what was called culteranismo, also known as Gongorism...
and Francisco de Quevedo
Francisco de Quevedo
Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era. Along with his lifelong rival, Luis de Góngora, Quevedo was one of the most prominent Spanish poets of the age. His style is characterized by what was called conceptismo...
.
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
was widespread in Brazil during the mid-18th century, following the Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
style. Literature was often produced by members of temporary or semi-permanent academies and most of the content was in the pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
genre. The most important literary centre in colonial Brazil was the prosperous Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais is one of the 26 states of Brazil, of which it is the second most populous, the third richest, and the fourth largest in area. Minas Gerais is the Brazilian state with the largest number of Presidents of Brazil, the current one, Dilma Rousseff, being one of them. The capital is the...
region, known for its gold mines, where a thriving proto-nationalist movement had begun. The most important poets were Cláudio Manuel da Costa
Cláudio Manuel da Costa
Cláudio Manuel da Costa was a Brazilian poet and musician, considered to be the introducer of the Neoclassicism in Brazil...
, Tomás Antônio Gonzaga
Tomás Antônio Gonzaga
Tomás Antônio Gonzaga was a Portuguese poet. One of the most famous Neoclassic Brazilian writers, he was also the ouvidor and the ombudsman of the city of Ouro Preto , as well as the desembargador of the appeal court in Bahia...
, Alvarenga Peixoto
Alvarenga Peixoto
Inácio José de Alvarenga Peixoto was a Colonial Brazilian Neoclassic poet and a lawyer. He wrote under the pen name Eureste Fenício.-Biography:Peixoto was born in Rio de Janeiro, to Simão Alvarenga Braga and Maria Braga...
and Manuel Inácio da Silva Alvarenga
Manuel Inácio da Silva Alvarenga
Manuel Inácio da Silva Alvarenga was a Brazilian poet.-Works:*O Desertor das Letras - heroic-comic poem*Glaura – erotic poems...
, all them involved in an uprising against the colonial power. Gonzaga and Costa were exiled to Africa as a consequence.
Romanticism
Neoclassicism lasted for an unnaturally long time, stifling innovation and restricting literary creation. It was only in 1836 that RomanticismRomanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
began influencing Brazilian poetry on a large scale, principally through the efforts of the expatriate poet Gonçalves de Magalhães
Gonçalves de Magalhães
Domingos José Gonçalves de Magalhães, Viscount of Araguaia was a Brazilian poet, playwright, medician and diplomat...
. A number of young poets, such as Casimiro de Abreu
Casimiro de Abreu
Casimiro José Marques de Abreu was a Brazilian poet, novelist and playwright, adept of the "Ultra-Romanticism" movement...
, began experimenting with the new style soon afterward. This period produced some of the first standard works of Brazilian literature.
The key features of the literature of the new-born country are exaggerated affect, nationalism, celebration of nature and the initial introduction of colloquial language. Romantic literature soon became very popular. Novelists like Joaquim Manuel de Macedo
Joaquim Manuel de Macedo
Joaquim Manuel de Macedo was a Brazilian novelist, doctor, teacher, poet, playwright and journalist, famous for the romance A Moreninha.He is the patron of the 20th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.-Life:...
, Manuel Antônio de Almeida
Manuel Antônio de Almeida
Manuel Antônio de Almeida was a Brazilian writer, medician and teacher. He is famous for the book Memoirs of a Police Sergeant, written under the pen name Um Brasileiro...
and José de Alencar
José de Alencar
José Martiniano de Alencar was a Brazilian lawyer, politician, orator, novelist and dramatist. He is one of the most famous writers of the first generation of Brazilian Romanticism, writing historical, regionalist and Indianist romances — being the most famous The Guarani...
published their works in serial
Serial (literature)
In literature, a serial is a publishing format by which a single large work, most often a work of narrative fiction, is presented in contiguous installments—also known as numbers, parts, or fascicles—either issued as separate publications or appearing in sequential issues of a single periodical...
form in the newspapers and became national celebrities.
Around 1850, a transition began, centered around Álvares de Azevedo
Álvares de Azevedo
Manuel Antônio Álvares de Azevedo was a Brazilian Romantic poet, short story writer, playwright and essayist...
. Azevedo's novel Noite na Taverna
Noite na Taverna
Noite na Taverna is a short story book written by Brazilian Ultra-Romantic author Álvares de Azevedo under the pen name Job Stern...
(A Night at the Tavern) and his poetry, collected posthumously in Lira dos Vinte Anos
Lira dos Vinte Anos
Lira dos Vinte Anos is a poetry anthology written by Brazilian Romantic author Álvares de Azevedo. Originally part of a project that would be written in partnership with Aureliano Lessa and Bernardo Guimarães called As Três Liras , it was published in 1853...
(Twenty-year-old Lyre), became influential. Azevedo was largely influenced by the poetry of Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
. This second Romantic generation was obsessed with morbidity and death.
At the same time, poets such as Castro Alves
Castro Alves
Antônio Frederico de Castro Alves was a Brazilian poet and playwright, famous for his Abolitionist and Republican poems...
, who wrote of the horrors of slavery (Navio Negreiro), began writing works with a specific progressive social agenda. The two trends coincided in one of the most important accomplishments of the Romantic era: the establishment of a Brazilian national identity based on Indian ancestry and the rich nature of the country. These traits first appeared in Gonçalves Dias' epic poem I-Juca Pirama
I-Juca Pirama
I-Juca-Pirama is an epic poem written by Brazilian author Gonçalves Dias. Published in 1851, it is written under decasyllabic and alexandrine verses, and divided in ten cantos...
, but soon became widespread. The consolidation of this sub-genre (indigenism) is found in two famous novels by José de Alencar
José de Alencar
José Martiniano de Alencar was a Brazilian lawyer, politician, orator, novelist and dramatist. He is one of the most famous writers of the first generation of Brazilian Romanticism, writing historical, regionalist and Indianist romances — being the most famous The Guarani...
: The Guarani, about a family of Portuguese colonists who took Indians as servants but were later slain by an enemy tribe, and Iracema
Iracema
Iracema is one of the three indigenous novels by José de Alencar. It was first published in 1865.-Plot introduction:The story revolves around the relationship between the Tabajara indigenous woman, Iracema; and the Portuguese colonist, Martim, who was allied with the Tabajara nation's enemies, the...
, about a Portuguese shipwrecked man who lives among the Indians and marries a beautiful Indian woman. Iracema is especially lyrical, opening with five paragraphs of pure free-style prose-poetry describing the title character.
Realism
The decline of Romanticism, along with a series of social transformations, occurred in the middle of the 19th century. A new form of proseProse
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...
writing emerged, including analysis of the indigenous people and description of the environment, in the regionalist authors (such as Franklin Távora
Franklin Távora
João Franklin da Silveira Távora was a Brazilian novelist, journalist, politician, lawyer and dramatist, famous for his Regionalist romance O Cabeleira, set in the 18th century Pernambuco...
and João Simões Lopes Neto
João Simões Lopes Neto
João Simões Lopes Neto was a Brazilian regionalist writer of Rio Grande Do Sul born March 9, 1865. After some unsuccessful business ventures he married at 27. He only wrote four works of note, but nevertheless had a strong importance to Brazilian regionalist writing...
). Under the influence of Naturalism
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...
and of writers like Émile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
, Aluísio Azevedo
Aluísio Azevedo
Aluísio Tancredo Gonçalves de Azevedo was a Brazilian novelist, caricaturist, diplomat, playwright and short story writer. Initially a Romantic writer, he would later adhere to the Naturalist movement...
wrote O Cortiço, with characters that represent all social classes and categories of the time. Brazilian Realism was not very original at first, but it took on extraordinary importance because of Machado de Assis and Euclides da Cunha
Euclides da Cunha
Euclides da Cunha was a Brazilian writer, sociologist and engineer. His most important work is Os Sertões , a non-fictional account of the military expeditions promoted by the Brazilian government against the rebellious village of Canudos, known as the War of Canudos...
.
Machado de Assis
Perhaps the most important writer of Brazilian Realism is Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908), the natural son of a half black wallpainter and a Portuguese woman, whose only education, besides literacy classes, was the extensive reading of borrowed books.Working as typesetter at a publishing house, he was soon acquainted with most of the world's literature and even managed to grasp something of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
. In his early career he wrote several best-selling novels (including A Mão e a Luva and Ressurreição
Ressurreição
Ressurreição is a novel written by the Brazilian writer Machado de Assis. It was first published in 1872. The author explained in this book that his idea when he wrote the book was put on action this thinking of Shakespeare:...
) which, despite their overzealous Romanticism, already show his vivacious humour and some of his pessimism towards the conventions of society.
After being introduced to Realism
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
, Machado de Assis changed his style and his themes, producing some of the most remarkable prose ever written in Portuguese. The style served as the medium for his corrosive humour and his intense pessimism, which was very far from the plain conceptions of his contemporaries.
Machado's most crucial works include:
- Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (Posthumous Memories of Bras Cubas), the fictional autobiographyAutobiographyAn autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
of a recently-deceased man, written by himself "from beyond." It is entirely anti-Romantic and ridicules the society of Rio de JaneiroRio de JaneiroRio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
of the time. This book contains one of the most pitiless sentences about love ever written: "Marcela amou-me durante quinze meses e onze contos de réis; nada mais. (Marcela loved me for fifteen months and eleven thousand reisBrazilian realThe real is the present-day currency of Brazil. Its sign is R$ and its ISO code is BRL. It is subdivided into 100 centavos ....
; nothing more)". - Dom CasmurroDom CasmurroDom Casmurro, written by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, was first published in Brazil in 1899. Like The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas and Quincas Borba, both by Machado de Assis, it is a masterpiece of realist literature. It is written as a fictional memoir by a distrusting, jealous husband...
(Sir Frown) purports to be the autobiography of a lonely man who has left his wife and his only son after enjoying years of happy conjugal life. The novel is famous in the Portuguese-speaking world for its analysis of a (possible, but never proven or admitted) case of adulteryAdulteryAdultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
. - Quincas BorbaQuincas BorbaQuincas Borba is a novel written by the Brazilian writer Machado de Assis. It was first published in 1891. It is also known in English as Philosopher or Dog?-External links:* '** ** ** ** ...
- O AlienistaO alienista"O Alienista" is a novella written by Brazilian author Machado de Assis. It was first published in 1882 as part of the Papéis avulsos...
, the short story about a psychiatristPsychiatryPsychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
who founds a hospital for the mentally ill in a small town and later engages in profound investigations on the nature and the cure of mental illness, greatly upsetting the town's lifestyle.
Machado was also a minor poet, writing mostly casual poetry of extraordinary correctness and beauty. His reputation as a novelist has kept his poetry in print, and recent criticism has regarded it better than that of many of his contemporaries.
Euclides da Cunha
The most important adept of Naturalism, CunhaEuclides da Cunha
Euclides da Cunha was a Brazilian writer, sociologist and engineer. His most important work is Os Sertões , a non-fictional account of the military expeditions promoted by the Brazilian government against the rebellious village of Canudos, known as the War of Canudos...
was always tormented by his family problems (he was killed by his wife's lover) and had to face political opposition because of his opinions. As a freelance journalist working for O Estado de São Paulo he covered the Canudos War -- a popular revolt with some egalitarian and Christian-fundamentalist traits that took place in Bahia
Bahia
Bahia is one of the 26 states of Brazil, and is located in the northeastern part of the country on the Atlantic coast. It is the fourth most populous Brazilian state after São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, and the fifth-largest in size...
in 1895-97. His stories, together with some essays he wrote about the people and the geography of the Brazilian North-East, were published in a thick volume called Os Sertões
Os Sertões
Os Sertões is a book written by the Brazilian author Euclides da Cunha, widely considered one of the greatest achievements of Brazilian and even World literature...
(Rebellion in the Backlands).
In his work Cunha put forward the revolutionary thesis that the Brazilian state was a violent and foreign entity, rejected (but often tolerated) by the vast majority of the illiterate and dispossessed population, some of whom preserved beliefs and behaviours that had not changed in a thousand years or more. He discovered, for instance, that Sebastianism
Sebastianism
Sebastianism, one aspect of the sleeping king folk-motif, is part of the Portuguese and Brazilian mythology and culture. It means waiting for a hero that will save Portugal and lead it to the Fifth Empire, and known as Eu nacional...
was then present in the Brazilian North-East and that many medieval Portuguese rhymes, folk-tales and traditions were still kept by the coarse people of the "sertões". This population did not accept secularism
Secularism
Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...
, the Republic
Republic
A republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people. In modern times, a common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of...
an government and, especially, justice of peace.
Pre-Modernism
The period between 1895 and 1922 is called Pre-Modernism by Brazilian scholars because, though there is no clear predominance of any style, there are some early manifestations of Modernism. The Pre-Modern era is curious, as the French school of SymbolismSymbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
did not catch on and most authors of Realism still maintained their earlier styles and their reputations (including Machado de Assis and poet Olavo Bilac
Olavo Bilac
Olavo Brás Martins dos Guimarães Bilac was a Brazilian Parnassian poet, journalist and translator. Alongside Alberto de Oliveira and Raimundo Correia, he was a member of the "Parnassian Triad"...
). Some authors of this time, like Monteiro Lobato
Monteiro Lobato
José Bento Renato Monteiro Lobato was one of Brazil's most influential writers, mostly for his children's books set in the fictional Sítio do Picapau Amarelo but he had been previously a prolific writer of fiction, a translator and an art critic...
, Lima Barreto
Lima Barreto
Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto was a Brazilian novelist and journalist. A major figure on the Brazilian Pre-Modernism, he is famous for the novel Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma, a bitter satire of the first years of the República Velha in Brazil.-Life:Lima Barreto was born in Rio de Janeiro in...
and Simões Lopes Neto, already show a distinctly modern character.
Modernism
ModernismModernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
began in Brazil with the Week of Modern Art
Week of Modern Art
The Modern Art Week was an arts festival in São Paulo, Brazil, that ran from February 11 to February 18, 1922...
, in 1922. The 1922 Generation was a nickname for the writers Mário de Andrade
Mário de Andrade
Mário Raul de Morais Andrade was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. One of the founders of Brazilian modernism, he virtually created modern Brazilian poetry with the publication of his Paulicéia Desvairada in 1922...
(Paulicéia Desvairada
Paulicéia Desvairada
Paulicéia Desvairada is a collection of poems by Mário de Andrade, published in 1922. It was Andrade's second poetry collection, and his most controversial and influential...
, Macunaíma
Macunaíma (novel)
Macunaíma is a 1928 novel by Brazilian writer Mário de Andrade. It is one of the founding texts of Brazilian modernism.The novel follows a young man, Macunaíma, "a hero without a character," born in the Brazilian jungle and possessing strange and remarkable abilities , as he travels to São Paulo...
), Oswald de Andrade
Oswald de Andrade
José Oswald de Andrade Souza was a Brazilian poet and polemicist. He was born and spent most of his life in São Paulo....
(Memórias Sentimentais de João Miramar
Memórias Sentimentais de João Miramar
Memórias Sentimentais de João Miramar is a 1924 novel by Brazilian writer Oswald de Andrade. It is one of the founding texts of Brazilian modernism because it has the preface which is an important unfavorable self-reflection about Oswald's works....
), Manuel Bandeira
Manuel Bandeira
Manuel Carneiro de Sousa Bandeira Filho was a poet, literary critic, and translator.Bandeira wrote over 20 books of poetry and prose. In 1904, he found out that he suffered from tuberculosis, which encouraged him to move from São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro, because of Rio's tropical beach weather...
, Cassiano Ricardo
Cassiano Ricardo
Cassiano Ricardo was a Brazilian journalist, literary critic, and poet.An exponent of the nationalistic tendencies of Brazilian modernism, he was associated with the Green-Yellow and Anta groups of the movement before launching the Flag group, a social-democratic reaction to these groups...
and others, all of whom combined nationalist tendencies with an interest in European modernism. Some new movements such as surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
were already important in Europe, and began to take hold in Brazil during this period.
Mário de Andrade
Mário de AndradeMário de Andrade
Mário Raul de Morais Andrade was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. One of the founders of Brazilian modernism, he virtually created modern Brazilian poetry with the publication of his Paulicéia Desvairada in 1922...
was born in São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
. He worked as a professor and was one of the organizers of the Week of Modern Art. He researched Brazilian folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
and folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
and used it in his books, avoiding the European style. His Brazilian anti-hero is Macunaíma
Macunaíma (novel)
Macunaíma is a 1928 novel by Brazilian writer Mário de Andrade. It is one of the founding texts of Brazilian modernism.The novel follows a young man, Macunaíma, "a hero without a character," born in the Brazilian jungle and possessing strange and remarkable abilities , as he travels to São Paulo...
, a product of ethnical and cultural mixture. Andrade's interest in folklore and his use of colloquial language were extremely influential, to the point that his innovations, at first revolutionary, came to dominate Brazilian literature.
Oswald de Andrade
Oswald de AndradeOswald de Andrade
José Oswald de Andrade Souza was a Brazilian poet and polemicist. He was born and spent most of his life in São Paulo....
, another participant in the Week of Modern Art in 1922, worked as a journalist in São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
. Born into a wealthy family, he travelled to Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
several times. Of the generation of 1922, Oswald de Andrade best represents the rebellious characteristics of the modernist movement. He is the author of the Manifesto Antropófago (Cannibal Manifesto) (1927), in which he says it is necessary that Brazil, like a cannibal
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
, eat foreign culture and, in digestion
Digestion
Digestion is the mechanical and chemical breakdown of food into smaller components that are more easily absorbed into a blood stream, for instance. Digestion is a form of catabolism: a breakdown of large food molecules to smaller ones....
, create its own culture.
Post-Modernism
What defined Brazilian modernism were two main traits: experimentalism in language and an enhanced social consciousness, or a mix between the two - as was the case with Osvald de Andrade , who was briefly attracted towards the communist movement. The reaction to modernism, then, assumed the form of a mix between its most salient trait, the use of more formal literary language (as was the case of the so-called "generation of 1945", whose twin hallmarks were, firstly, the highly physical poetry of João Cabral de Melo NetoJoão Cabral de Melo Neto
João Cabral de Melo Neto was born in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, and is considered one of the greatest Brazilian poets of all time.He is often quoted saying "I try not to perfume the flower"...
, who opposed Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Carlos Drummond de Andrade was perhaps the most influential Brazilian poet of the 20th century. He has become something of a national poet; his poem "Canção Amiga" was printed on the 50 cruzados note...
's poetic modernism, and secondly the sonnets - on both the Italian and English model - of the early Vinicius de Moraes
Vinicius de Moraes
Marcus Vinicius de Moraes , known as Vinicius de Moraes and nicknamed O Poetinho , was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Son of Lydia Cruz de Moraes and Clodoaldo Pereira da Silva Moraes, he was a seminal figure in contemporary Brazilian music...
), followed by varying doses, according to the author considered, of subjectivism, political conservatism and militant Catholicism.
Two writers from that "school" that have published after the 1950s are without a doubt already inside the canon of Brazilian literature: Clarice Lispector
Clarice Lispector
Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist...
, whose existentialist novels and short stories are filled with stream-of-consciousness and epiphanies, and João Guimarães Rosa
João Guimarães Rosa
João Guimarães Rosa was a Brazilian novelist, considered by many to be one of the greatest Brazilian novelists born in the 20th century. His best-known work is the novel Grande Sertão: Veredas...
, whose experimental language has changed the face of Brazilian literature forever. His novel Grande Sertão: Veredas has been compared to James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
or Alfred Döblin
Alfred Döblin
Alfred Döblin was a German expressionist novelist, best known for the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz .- 1878–1918:...
's Berlin Alexanderplatz
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Berlin Alexanderplatz is a novel by Alfred Döblin, published in 1929. The story concerns a small-time criminal, Franz Biberkopf, fresh from prison, who is drawn into the underworld. When his criminal mentor murders the prostitute whom Biberkopf has been relying on as an anchor, he realizes that...
.
Following in the wake of conservative subjectivism innaugurated by the militantily Catholic novelists-cum-polemicists Octavio de Faria, Lúcio Cardoso
Lúcio Cardoso
Joaquim Lúcio Cardoso Filho, known as Lúcio Cardoso was a Brazilian novelist, playwright, and poet....
, Cornélio Penna and Gustavo Corção, Nelson Rodrigues
Nélson Rodrigues
Nelson Falcão Rodrigues was a Brazilian playwright, journalist and novelist. In 1943, he helped usher in a new era in Brazilian theater with his play Vestido de Noiva , considered revolutionary for the complex exploration of its characters' psychology and its use of colloquial dialog...
made his career as playwright and sports journalist. His plays and short stories - the latter mostly originally published as newspaper feulletons - chronicled the social mores of the 1950s and 60s; adultery and sexual pathologies in general being a major fixation of his. His sports writing describes the evolution of football
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
into the national passion of Brazil. He was heavily critical of the young leftists who opposed the military dictatorship after the 1964 coup; for that he was penned as right-wing and conservative. For a time heavily pro-dictatorship, he had to suffer the tragic fate of having one his sons being tortured and incarcerated for belonging to an underground guerrilla organization.
Contemporary
Contemporary Brazilian literature is, on the whole, very much focused on city life and all its aspects: loneliness, violence, political issues and media control. Writers like Rubem FonsecaRubem Fonseca
Rubem Fonseca is a Brazilian writer.He was born in Juiz de Fora, in the state of Minas Gerais, but he has lived most of his life in Rio de Janeiro. In 1952, he started his career as a low-level cop and, later became a police commissioner, one of the highest ranks in the civil police of Brazil...
, Sérgio Sant'Anna
Sérgio Sant'Anna
Sérgio Sant'Anna is a Brazilian writer, born in 1941 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. He has written poems, plays, short stories, novelas and novels...
have written important books with these themes in the 70s, breaking new ground in Brazilian literature, up until then mostly having dealt with rural life.
New trends since the 80s have included works by authors such as João Gilberto Noll, Milton Hatoum, Bernardo Carvalho, João Almino
João Almino
João Almino is a Brazilian novelist. He is the author of The Brasília Quintet, which consists of the novels Ideas on Where to Spend the End of the World, Samba-Enredo, The Five Seasons of Love João Almino is a Brazilian novelist. He is the author of The Brasília Quintet, which consists of the...
, Adriana Lisboa and Cristovão Tezza.
Poets such as Ferreira Gullar
Ferreira Gullar
Ferreira Gullar is the pen name for José Ribamar Ferreira , Brazilian poet, playwright, essayist, art critic, and television writer...
and Manoel de Barros
Manoel de Barros
Manoel Wenceslau Leite de Barros is a Brazilian poet. He has won many awards for his work, including twice the Prêmio Jabuti , the most important literary award in Brazil...
are among the most acclaimed within literary circles in Brazil, the former had been nominated for the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
.
See also
- List of Brazilian writers
- Portuguese language literaturePortuguese language literaturePortuguese language literature can be:* Literature of Angola* Literature of Brazil* Portuguese literature...
- Latin American literatureLatin American literatureLatin American literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and indigenous languages of the Americas. It rose to particular prominence globally during the second half of the 20th century, largely due to the...
- Brazilian artBrazilian artBrazil was colonized by Portugal in the middle of the 16th century. In those early times, owing to the primitive state of Portuguese civilization there, not much could be done in regard to art expression. The original inhabitants of the land, pre-Columbian Indian peoples, most likely produced...