Eça and Machado
Money and adultery in Lusophone realism
In February 1878 Eça de Queirós publishes his novel
O Primo Basílio, whose plot is heavily concerned with the causes
and consequences of an adulterous love affair. Two months later, Machado de Assis
publishes in Brazil a famous review bitterly criticizing Eça’s novel as derivative,
borderline plagiarism of Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet, among other
French sources. In 1881 Machado would go on to publish Memórias Póstumas de
Brás Cubas, a novel that is heralded as the first Brazilian realist piece
of fiction and that Castro Rocha (2011) suggests is an instance of Machadian
emulative poetics in regard to Eça. Like O Primo Basílio, adultery
is one of its major plot elements. These two novels and the links between Eça and
Machado form a node which is crucial to understand Lusophone realism: themes and
literary techniques derived from French authors are transplanted to different
cultural contexts in a way that challenges the relationship between a French core
and Portuguese-speaking peripheries. This takes the shape of connections between
slave labor, money and illicit sex in the two works under analysis, which provide
insight into the specificities of this Atlantic strand of realist literature.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The reception of O Primo Basílio in Brazil
- 3.Machado’s reading: Emulation and plagiarism
- 4.Money and adultery
- 5.Conclusion
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Notes
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Works cited