Os paradoxos do niilismo em Antero de Quental, Eça de Queirós e Cesário Verde

Abstract

The main objective of this thesis is to investigate the ressonances of the European nihilism in the literary productions of Antero de Quental, Eça de Queirós and Cesário Verde. According to the theoretial thinking of Nietzsche, European nihilism means the history of the insertion, then of the devaluation, and finalyy of the decline of Western cosmological values. In this thesis, we aim at demonstrating how, in the works of the three mentioned Portuguese authors, this Nietzschean concept of history is reflected. Therefore, we established an analysis of these three authors according to three main themes connected to the historical development of the European nihilism along the second half of the 19th Century: firtly, the cousciousness of the death of God ; secondly, the Positivist attempt to substitute the recently deceased God by the scientific truth; and thirdly, the aspects concerning the growing feeling of the devaluation of life, as the attempsts to find a meaning for it failed. Thus, based on these themes we propose to answer and discuss the following questions: how can the works of Quental, Queirós and Verde represent this history pressuposed by Nietzsche? What kinds of influence did this history have in the works of these three authors? And, if there is any truth in the fact that life is no more meaninful, and that is the cause for its devaluation, is it possible for the literary activity to advocate values for itself? These are the main questions we aim at answering in the pages of the thesis that follows