Teixeira de Queirós and the Positivist Criticism

Abstract

Francisco Teixeira de Queirós is, after Eça de Queirós, the most representative novelist of Portuguese naturalism. The anticlerical novel that he published in 1877, Amor Divino, deserved the applause of the positivist critics, who recognized him as having an excellent artistic quality and even considered the author possessing a deeper scientific culture than that of Eça de Queirós. The honeymoon between Teixeira de Queirós and the positivists, who dominated the Portuguese cultural press, continued when he published, in 1879, a new novel: Os noivos. But the tolerance and benevolence of the positivists towards the novelist would not last long: only long enough for the disciples of Teófilo Braga, the dominant figure in Portuguese positivism, to realize that Teixeira de Queirós was unwilling to submit to Teófilo's intellectual tutelage.