Marques de Carvalho (1866-1910) and Naturalism in the Pará Amazon

Abstract

João Marques de Carvalho (1886-1910) was one of a few writers that managed to publish a great literary production, as periodics and as volumes, for example poems, short stories, or novels, in the Amazon, in the state of Pará. In prefaces of books and periodic publications, the author raised, with enthusiasm and vehemence, the flag of Naturalism, literary style considered excessively realistic and raw, that he adopted, protected, and devoted along his career. This way, Marques de Carvalho put himself against the literary production practiced in Pará, because most of his coworkers in Belém at the nineteenth century showed much affection to the Romantism, which was still quite expressive in Brazil, even with the appearance of new literary tendencies in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Therefore, we aim with this paper to demonstrate how Marques de Carvalho positioned himself in relation to Naturalism and to study the main contributions of the author from Pará to this literary style in the Pará Amazon, from the novels O pajé (1887) and Hortência (1888), both published and set in Belém do Pará.