O Primo Basílio: Aesthetics and the Exposure of the Bourgeoisie

Abstract

This study is dedicated to the novel O primo Basílio, by the Portuguese author Eça de Queirós, considering that its aesthetics, linked to its critical purpose, promote the universal character of the work, its perennial contemporariness. Our thesis is that the Queirosian novel represents more than the treatment of a theme. It remodels the time and society in which the narrative unfolds through aesthetic resources that reveal the basis on which it is structured: the capitalist thread which weaves petit-bourgeois relations into the composition of the characters-their values, moral positions, behaviors and thoughts. It is a dialectical composition because, although inserted in the bourgeois context, the work lays this system bare, defetishizing it through the actions of characters who oppose each other. Especially, the actions of Luísa and Juliana, whose consciousness is determined by their social being. To carry out the investigation, we endorse the reflections of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Keywords:
Aesthetics; Petty-Bourgeoisie; Ideology; Universality