Vida amorfa: Pardal Mallet e o naturalismo da desilusão

Abstract

This research aims to tell the story of Brazilian journalist and novelist João Carlos de Medeiros Pardal Mallet (1864-1894) and to promote new ways of understanding of late nineteenth-century naturalism. It proposes the rereading of the biography and memory of the writer through the reconstitution of the historical and social context in which he lived, as well as the political ideals defended by the artists of the late nineteenth century, marked, mainly, by the Abolition of slavery and the Proclamation of the Republic. The research relies on primary sources, such as biographical notes, reviews, and critical comments published in newspapers and magazines, consulted online at the National Library’s Newsprint Collection. We will analyze Pardal Mallet’s novels Hóspede (1887), and Lar (1888) based on David Baguley’s (1990) conception of naturalism, divided into two strands: the tragic, better known and studied, and the comic (or disillusioned) one, in which we propose to place Pardal Mallet’s work. The novels of the corpus characterize a type of fiction that breaks with the traditional linear plot and romantic idealizations, through aborted adventures, characters who reveal small heroic potential and who are absorbed by the mediocrity of their banal lives.