TOWARDS A POETICS OF EÇA DE QUEIRÓS’S CHARACTERS

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to reflect upon the strategies of character construction in the narrative fiction of Eça de Queirós, in particular during the 1870s that corresponds to the writer’s realist phase. First, and drawing from the author’s correspondence, I discuss the doubts that were often expressed in relation to his work and illusions to life and truth that Eça intended to project in his fictional characters. Second, I focus on the creation of character types that are prominent in the literary production of realism and that occupy an important place in Eça’s fictional worlds. Luísa, one of the main characters in the novel Cousin Basílio published in 1878 is a key part of this reflection that aims to analyze the rhetorical-discursive strategies that sustain the possible existence of the fictional character in the world of which they are a part, and reevaluate the critical judgments to which the character was subjected, with particular emphasis on those articulated by Machado de Assis. In conclusion, I will return to the issue of character types and the inclusion of Luísa in this category.