Álvaro do Carvalhal: what can be transmitted to us by a “minor author”?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the short story “Os canibais” by Álvaro do Carvalhal to revisit the Portuguese literary historiography as a way to integrate that which was banned or neglected by the institutional historiographers. Thus, it is relevant to study the process of deconstruction of the fantastic and frenetic canon from the point of view of this ‘minor author’, to examine his close relationship with ‘major writers’ and with the other aesthetics which were considered canonic at his time, namely, the ultra-romanticism, romanticism and realism, in the second half of the 19th century in Portugal.