Naturalism under the Modernist Gaze: Candido and the Criticism at Aluizio Azevedo

Abstract

The present essay discusses the modernist criticism on Brazilian naturalism, specifically that by Antonio Candido and Aluízio Azevedo, based on the propositions by Jacques Rancière, who claims that realism is not mimesis, but the moment when art abandons representation. Rancière’s idea of gloss, which unmakes the hierarchical relation between the metropolis and the periphery in order to install a power relation in the intellectual field is used for a discussion on the naturalism of the French writer Èmile Zola and the Brazilian writer Aluízio Azevedo.