The “Great Men” of the two Queiroses: O Salústio Nogueira And O Conde de Abranhos

Abstract

In 1881 Teixeira de Queirós published the comedy O Grande Homem and two years later, in 1883, the novel O Salústio Nogueira: Estudo de Política Contemporânea – two pieces centered both on the problematics of constitutional alternation, as well as on the problematics of political and social arrivisme. The same problematics, incidentally, had been behind Eça de Queirós’s O Conde de Abranhos, a novel written in 1879, which would only be published posthumously, in 1925. Differences notwithstanding, the three pieces show significant overlaps, and these overlaps are all the more intriguing given the authors’ ignorance of each other’s works. The current essay develops a comparative analysis of the works in question, in light of the broader context of naturalist realism that framed the oeuvres of the two authors.