José de Alencar
1829–1877
Biography
José de Alencar (1829–1877) was born in Fortaleza, in north-eastern Brazil, and made his career in Rio de Janeiro, the imperial capital. He trained as a lawyer and worked as a journalist and essayist, and he sat in the Chamber of Deputies for several terms. He favoured a gradual end to slavery, and in 1868 he was appointed Minister of Justice.
He is regarded as the leading novelist of Brazilian Romanticism and is often called the father of Brazilian literature. His best-known books are O Guarani (1857) and Iracema (1865), which took Indigenous peoples and the colonial past as their subject, a current now called Indianism. He also wrote plays, chronicles and political pieces, and his fiction still shows how Brazilians of his time pictured their own history and society.
This library holds three of his works: A Pata da Gazela, Cinco Minutos and Diva. They are not Indianist epics but stories of love and social life in Rio de Janeiro, so they show the other side of a writer better remembered for his historical and Indigenous themes. Read alongside his political career, they give a sense of the life of the capital in his time.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
A Pata da Gazela
by José de Alencar
A light romance of Rio de Janeiro society that begins with two fashionable young women in a carriage on the Rua da Quitanda. The title is the nickname of a small foot, the clue that sets a young man pursuing its owner through the drawing rooms of the city.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Cinco Minutos
by José de Alencar
Alencar's first novel is a confidence written to a cousin: the narrator tells how a missed omnibus at the Rocio, five minutes late, started a love story he insists is a history and not a novel. Short, ironic and quick, it is an early picture of Rio in the 1850s.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Diva
by José de Alencar
Diva is a novel written by the Brazilian writer José de Alencar. It was first published in 1864. Emilia is a rich and cultured girl that, with a hint of cruelty, enjoys the courtship of young men, but makes them suffer for that. In this love story between Augusto and the divine…
Summary from Wikipedia: Diva (Alencar novel) (CC BY-SA 4.0)Iracema: com uma noticia biographica do auctor
by José Martiniano de Alencar
On the coast of Ceará in the first years of colonisation, Iracema, a young woman of the Tabajara people who keeps a sacred secret, falls in love with the Portuguese warrior Martim. José de Alencar tells their story in lyrical prose as a legend of the founding of Brazil.
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.Lucíola
by José de Alencar
Lucíola is an urban fiction novel written by the Brazilian writer José de Alencar. It was first published in 1862. It treats mainly of the late-nineteenth century Rio de Janeiro society, exploring its deficient morality. This novel is said to be influenced by Alexandre Dumas'…
Summary from Wikipedia: Lucíola (CC BY-SA 4.0)O Gaúcho
by José de Alencar
José de Alencar's novel of the gaucho country opens on the plains by the River Uruguay and moves into the troubled years of the Farroupilha war in Rio Grande do Sul. It is a tale of horsemen, border quarrels and the pull between love and loyalty. This book uses the racial and…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.O Sertanejo
by José de Alencar
In the backlands of Ceará in the eighteenth century, the cowhand Arnaldo Louredo serves a rich cattle rancher and is devoted to his daughter, Dona Flor, while a rival of the family plots against him. José de Alencar's novel is a cattle-country epic of cowboys, droughts and…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Senhora
by José de Alencar
Senhora is a novel written by the Brazilian writer José de Alencar. It was first published in 1875, two years before the author's death. It was the third book by the author about the position of women in Brazil's 19th century Rio de Janeiro society (the other two being Diva and…
Summary from Wikipedia: Senhora (novel) (CC BY-SA 4.0)Til
by José de Alencar
A rural novel of the province of São Paulo in the mid-nineteenth century, around a wealthy planter's household, his daughter Linda and the orphan girl Berta, nicknamed Til, who lives among them. José de Alencar mixes the customs of the fazenda, a mystery of crime and a love…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Ubirajara: Lenda Tupi
by José Martiniano de Alencar
Before the Europeans came, the young hunter Jaguarê sets out to prove himself a warrior and earn a new name. José de Alencar's short novel, told as a Tupi legend, follows him through combat, love and the rivalry between two nations. This book contains scenes of violence as its…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.