Naturalism Against Nature

‘On one such occasion, he stopped in front of the mirror and looked at himself very carefully, trying to discover on his discoloured face anything, any sign that would denounce the black race. He observed himself well, separating his hair at the the roots, stretching the skin on his cheeks, examining his nostrils and teeth; finally he flung the mirror onto the dresser, consumed by an immense and fathomless dissatisfaction.’

An age of freak shows, sexual pathologies and scientific racism, the late-nineteenth century saw doom-laden predictions made about the future of Europe’s cultural and economic periphery, supposedly beset by endemic licentiousness and darker skin. Querying the widespread view that Naturalist literatures reinforced such prejudices, David J. Bailey charts their playful travels around the Lusophone world, where a perceived breakdown of family, nation and empire both confirmed and threatened the authority of European ‘science’. Drawing on queer and postcolonial theory, contemporaneous thought, and encompassing a range of extraordinary and often humorous texts, from scandalised tales of pederasty to the biting social critiques of Eça de Queirós, Bailey uncovers a dynamic, transatlantic network of Portuguese and Brazilian writers who, in compelling and remarkably similar ways, resisted the devastating implications of ‘scientific’ approaches to life and love at the fin de siècle.

David Bailey is a Lecturer in Portuguese Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester.