EÇA DE QUEIROZ, JOSÉ MARIA de. - Portuguese novelist, b. in Povoa de Varzim on 25 Nov. 1845, d. at Torigi on 16 Aug. 1900. A keen observer, whose intellectual experience was greatly enriched by a long stay in foreign countries, a subtle humorist, he set the example of a new richness of language, of a flexibility of style, of a creative power never before known in Portugal.
From an initial modernist stance (the Prosas barbaras date from 1875), he converted with enthusiasm to a realism that denies and turns pessimistic, to free himself from it later when aspirations of reform and reconstruction directed his concerns toward broader problems: thus in Crime do Padre Amaro (1875), his first success, he studied in the light of observation and experience the problem of religious celibacy, but in Primo Barillo (1878) and more so in Maias (1888) the interest extends to the life of the capital, to its morality, to its religion, and the acuteness of observation and the sometimes intense emotion are not diminished by caricatural exaggeration. The autobiographical motif of the slightly later Memorias de um atomo, made bitter by the sense of the vanity of life, is accentuated in the Correspondencia de Fadrique Mendes (1889), an aesthete sensitive to new ideas but incapable of realizing them.
Il Mandarino (1880) presents in an exotic setting an amusing satire of Portuguese bureaucracy, while La Relíqua, a caricature of hypocritical bigotry, is the occasion for a stupendous evocation of the Passion and the Holy Places. In a final phase, and particularly in the novels A ilustre casa de Ramires and A cidade e a serra (The City and the Mountain), this position appears to be overcome: the horizon broadens and brightens with a serene optimism; free from the canons of realistic art, the writer no longer dwells on the minute notation of detail, but around a real theme creates pictures of ideal beauty: I Contos mark its final peak. Among the minor works, the tale A catastrofe takes on a particular significance as an exaltation of that experience of sorrow which alone is capable of awakening the best energies of a people as of an individual.
Bibliography6 works
Jole Scudieri Ruggieri