Background
He was born at the northern fishing town of Povoa de Varzim, his father being a retired judge.
(The Correspondence of Fradique Mendesostensibly letters,...)
The Correspondence of Fradique Mendesostensibly letters, with an arch introductionactually ranges widely and revels in many forms of discourse. In this singular work, originally published in 1900, one finds meditations, dialogues, observations, grand shifts in tone, occulted ironies, pastiches, lampoons, and an underlying hilarity throughout. Readers will be reminded of Ishmaels lofty digressions, of Ivan Karamazovs dialogues with his imaginary devil, of Flauberts stylistic virtuosity, of Gogols quiet comedyand more. Fradique, at one point, disingenuously tells us he will never write a book because no language is capable of representing the real significance of anything. But Fradiques letters go on to offer us nearly everything, and they presciently anticipate much of what is rightly celebrated in the best of postmodern writing. This magnificent novel now appears in a beautiful and deft translation that will entertain and delight with wit, intelligence and many surprises.
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(O Crime do Padre Amaro, perhaps the greatest novel of Por...)
O Crime do Padre Amaro, perhaps the greatest novel of Portuguese realism, is Queirós' criticism of the corrpution in the clergy of his time. A new priest, Father Amaro, arrives in the provincial capital Leiria, where he soon meets and falls in love with Amélia. She becomes pregnant, and is abandoned by Amaro. Heartbroken, Amélia dies. Faced with the existence of his newborn child when he is a 'disciple of God,' Amaro delivers the child to an infanticide, the 'maker of angels.'
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(O crime do padre Amaro)
O crime do padre Amaro
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1482758482/?tag=2022091-20
He was born at the northern fishing town of Povoa de Varzim, his father being a retired judge.
He went through the university of Coimbra, and on taking his degree in law was appointed Administrador de Concelho at Leiria, but soon tired of the narrow mental atmosphere of the old cathedral town and left it.
He accompanied the Conde de Rezende to Egypt, where he assisted at the opening of the Suez Canal, and to Palestine, and on his return settled down to journalism in Lisbon and began to evolve a style, at once magical and unique, which was to renovate his country's prose. Though he spent much of his days with the philosopher sonneteer Anthero de Quental, and the critic Jayme Batalha Reis, afterwards consul-general in London, he did not restrict his intimacy to men of letters, but frequented all kinds of society, acquiring a complete acquaintance with contemporary Portuguese life and manners.
Entering the consular service in 1872, he went to Havana, and, after a tour in the United States, was transferred two years later to Newcastle-on-Tyne and in 1876 to Bristol.
In 1888 he became Portuguese consul-general in Paris, and there died in 1900.
Queiroz made his literary debut in 1870 by a sensational story, The Mystery of the Cintra Road, written in collaboration with the art critic Ramalho Ortigao, but the first publication which brought him fame was The Far pas, a series of satirical and humorous sketches of various phases of social life, which, to quote the poet Guerra Junqueiro, contain "the epilepsy of talent. " These essays, the joint production of the same partners, criticized and ridiculed the faults and foibles of every class in turn, mainly by a comparison with the French, for the education of Queiroz had made him a Frenchman in ideas and sympathies.
His Brazilian friend, Eduardo Prado, bears witness that at this period French literature, especially Hugo's verse, and even French politics, interested Queiroz profoundly, while he altogether ignored the belles-lettres of his own country and its public affairs. This phase lasted for some years, and even when he travelled in the East he was inclined to see it with the eyes of Flaubert, though the publication of The Relic and that delightful prose poem Sweet Miracle afterwards showed that he had been directly impressed and deeply penetrated by its scenery, poetry and mysticism. The Franco-German War of 1870, however, by lowering the prestige of France, proved the herald of a national Portuguese revival, and had a great influence on Queiroz, as also had his friend Oliveira Martins (q. v. ), the biographer of the patriot kings of the Aviz dynasty. He founded the Portuguese Realist-Naturalist school, of which he remained for the rest of his life the chief exponent, by a powerful romance, The Crime of Father Amaro, written in 1871 at Leiria but only issued in 1875. Its appearance then led to a baseless charge that he had plagiarized La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret and ill-informed critics began to name Queiroz the Portuguese Zola, though he clearly occupied an altogether different plane in the domain of art.
During his stay in England he produced two masterpieces, Cousin Basil and The Maias, but they show no traces of English influence, nor again are they French in tone, for, living near to France, his disillusionment progressed and was completed when he went to Paris and had to live under the regime of the Third Republic.
(The Correspondence of Fradique Mendesostensibly letters,...)
(O Crime do Padre Amaro, perhaps the greatest novel of Por...)
(O crime do padre Amaro)
