Eça and Machado

In February 1878 Eça de Queirós publishes his novel O Primo Basílio, whose plot is heavily concerned with the causes and consequences of an adulterous love affair. Two months later, Machado de Assis publishes in Brazil a famous review bitterly criticizing Eça’s novel as derivative, borderline plagiarism of Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet, among other French sources. In 1881 Machado would go on to publish Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas, a novel that is heralded as the first Brazilian realist piece of fiction and that Castro Rocha (2011) suggests is an instance of Machadian emulative poetics in regard to Eça. Like O Primo Basílio, adultery is one of its major plot elements. These two novels and the links between Eça and Machado form a node which is crucial to understand Lusophone realism: themes and literary techniques derived from French authors are transplanted to different cultural contexts in a way that challenges the relationship between a French core and Portuguese-speaking peripheries. This takes the shape of connections between slave labor, money and illicit sex in the two works under analysis, which provide insight into the specificities of this Atlantic strand of realist literature.