O crítico Adolfo Caminha e as batalhas pelo reconhecimento literário

Abstract

The aim of this study is to read Adolfo Caminha’s (1867-1897) critical essays collected in the volume Cartas literárias (1895) as a means of clarification of political and aesthetic stances, as well as occasions to claim legitimacy to his work, in the battles for literary recognition. The work tries to understand the multiple, often paradoxical points of view as expressions of the paradoxes inherent to literary life in the late nineteenth century. Simulteneously elitist and populist, idealist and materialist, romantic and naturalist, the critic Adolfo Caminha did what had to be done in order to legitimize his position as a naturalist novelist in Brazil in the 1890s.