Abstract
This article explores two contrastive and complementary lines of representation of nature in José de Alencar's novel, O guarani (1857), namely landscape and still life. A genre that reached its climax in the 17th Century in The Netherlands, still life comes to the forefront of painting by valuing characteristics such as domesticity, attachment to detail and, above all, repression of desire, as pointed out by Svetlana Alpers, Meyer Schapiro and Jacqueline Labbe. From a formal point of view, the represented object needs to be removed from its original context and inserted into a new web of relations. All these aspects are present in the description of Ceci's room in the opening chapter, where attention to the “minimal things” and “miniatures” (Araripe Jr.), gives such a force to desire that it permeates the whole novel and becomes a central element to move its narrative gear.
Keywords:
19th Century; Romanticism; description; desire; narrative