SOME CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT JOSÉ VERÍSSIMO’S LITERARY FICTION

Abstract

In the second half of the 19th century, the writer and literary critic José Veríssimo (1857-1916) began to publish works about the Amazon: studies of local economy and traditions, essays about cultural and social life, and literary fiction as well. The books Primeiras páginas (1878) and Cenas da vida amazônica (1886) form the corpus of his fictional work. The acuteness with which the landscapes and societies are described by José Veríssimo evidences his desire to build a "faithful", less exotic or mythical image of the region and its inhabitants. The fidelity intended by the author finds its origin, among other things, in the reading of travel reports that greatly contributed to the construction of endogenous and exogenous imaginaries about the Amazon. Through a reading of the work of José Veríssimo, this brief essay aims to analyze to what extent travel reports contributed to the genesis of a regionalist literature in the 19^th century.