EÇA DE QUEIRÓS AND THE JEWISH QUESTION

Abstract

According to the note announcing this issue of the RHI that frontier is a concept with a more geographical connotation, it will no less apply to the symbolic field in which ideas and knowledge are born, developed and circulated. Effectively, if there are boundaries that delimit territories, there are also others that shape and determine mentalities. With this text on Eça, we intend to meet this motto. To what extent was the fact that he was born in a Mediterranean country, a privileged venue for the Holy Office, and to perform consular functions in Newcastle – in a more globalized and tolerant society than the German one at the time – to what extent these circumstances influenced discourse and The thought of Eça in relation to the Jewish Question and to the anti-Semitic
persecutions that occurred in 1880 in Germany? Starting from the analysis of the thinking of the European intelligentsia of this time; Starting from a brief sociological analysis of the situation of the Jews in Germany, we proceeded to the analysis of the discourse of Eça, shaped mainly in two articles that wrote in 1880 for the Gazeta de Noticias of Rio de Janeiro. It interested us to know what the position of Eça: anti-Semitism or phylosemitism? We were also interested to see if his speech contained novelty or was rather a repository of stereotypes and prejudices. The result was surprising, despite the ambiguity so characteristic of the author ...