(1829-1877) novelist
Jose Martiniano de Alencar was born on May 1 in Mecejana in the state of Ceara in Brazil. He came from a well-to-do family of the northeastern region of Brazil, and he pursued his higher education in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. After completing his studies, he moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1850 to begin his career as a lawyer and a journalist. In 1856, he rose to literary fame through his critiques of the sentimental poetry of a famous Brazilian author, Domingos Jose Gon^alves de Ma-galhaes. That same year, Alencar published his first novel, Five Minutes, which came out as a serial in a daily newspaper.
Alencar also wrote plays, biographies, political analyses, and journalistic works, but he is best known as a novelist. He was one of the earliest novelists in Brazil, and his goal was to create novels that were unique to Brazil’s situation as a newly independent nation and that could represent the Brazilian national identity. He wrote historical novels and novels about modern Brazilian life in urban and rural areas, but his most famous works are three novels whose main characters are indigenous Brazilians: O Guarani (The Guar an Indian, 1857), Iracema (1865), and Ubirajara (1874). Alencar’s image of Brazil’s identity as a new nation was based on the mix of cultures between native Brazilians and Portuguese colonialists. Alencar’s representation of miscegenation between Indians and white Portuguese colonialists as the root of the Brazilian race predicts the theories of an important Brazilian author of the 20th century, Gilberto freyre, who defined Brazil as a racial democracy. For Alencar, it was this mix that made Brazil’s cultural identity unique. He valorizes the noble Indian characters in his romantic novels, and his work is considered part of the indianist movement in Brazilian literature. Because he was the only novelist from that movement (all of the other Indianist writers were poets), and because he was one of the earliest Brazilian novelists, his work is especially important in the history of Brazilian literature.
In addition to being a novelist, Alencar had a long career in public affairs, which influenced his social ideals and his writing. Following his success as a lawyer and a journalist, Alencar was a deputy in the legislature and then minister of justice from 1868 to 1870. He ran for the senate in 1869 and received the highest number of votes. However, Pedro II, the emperor, had the constitutional privilege to select from three finalists, and he chose a different candidate because Alencar had previously criticized him. In spite of this disappointment, Alencar participated in public affairs throughout his life, in addition to his career as a journalist and later as a university professor. He was considered one of the greatest orators of his day. Alencar died on December 12 of tuberculosis.
Other Works by Jose de Alencar
Iracema: A Novel. Translated by Clifford E. Landers. Los Angeles: Getty Center for Education in the Arts, 2000.
Senhora: Profile of a Woman. Translated by Catarina Feldmann Edinger. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.
Works about Jose de Alencar
Haberly, David. Three Sad Races: Racial Identity and National Consciousness in Brazilian Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Schwarz, Roberto. “The Importing of the Novel to Brazil and its Contradictions in the Work of Alencar.” In Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture. New York: verso, 1992.
Treece, David. Exiles, Allies, Rebels: Brazil’s Indianist Movement, Indigenist Politics, and the Imperial Nation-State. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000.
