Diseases of time: Camilo’s a queda dum anjo

Abstract

Assuming that the novel’s historicity constitutes one of the central pillars of the nineteenth century’s fictional tradition, the present text proposes a revision of the conventional concept of the historical novel as codified during the century under consideration. It will be argued that not only the treatment of a particular timeframe – a move away from contemporaneity – is considered “historical”, but that the narrative itself opts for a setting belonging to the present which functions as an allegory of the past. In order to substantiate the claims of this thesis, recourse is made to Camilian fiction, particularly to the novel A Queda dum Anjo. In that work, contemporaneity is exemplified in a moment of history, in the sense in which the protagonist represents not so much an individualized character, but rather a diagnosis of historical time, or even, a disease of time.