Aluísio Azevedo and Portugal: an ambiguous relationship

Abstract

The reading of Aluísio Azevedo’s novels led many critics to consider that this Brazilian novelist had a very strong anti-Portuguese bias. This study aims to correct this assessment, based on the analysis of the biography of the writer from Maranhão (1857-1913). Son of Portuguese parents, he lived his childhood and adolescence in a patriarchal and slave society, dominated by Portuguese, Luso-Brazilian traders and by the rural oligarchy and the ultramontane Church. Self-taught, but raised in an educated family, he completed his training in Rio de Janeiro as a journalist and caricaturist, before asserting himself as a writer. He was greatly influenced by Portuguese intellectuals and writers, such as Ramalho Ortigão, Eça de Queirós, Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho and by the caricaturist Bordalo Pinheiro, whom he met in Rio de Janeiro and with whom he would maintain friendly relations throughout his life. In Rio de Janeiro, the author actively participated in the promotion of the work of Eça de Queirós, before asserting himself as the promoter of Naturalism in Brazil. For ten years, Azevedo was, alongside Ferreira de Araújo and Machado de Assis, one of the main activists in favor of signing a Portuguese-Brazilian copyright agreement that guaranteed equality and reciprocity between Brazilian and Portuguese authors.Thus, the letters sent to friends and quoted in this article deny the accusations of anti-Lusitanist by the author of O Mulato, Casa de Pensão and O Cortiço.