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José de Alencar (May 1, 1829—December 12, 1877), was a Brazilian novelist. Born in Fortaleza, Alencar was son of an important senator, José Martiano de Alencar, and the cousin of the later, Ana Josefina de Alencar.
After earning a bachelor's degree in Law he traveled to Rio de Janeiro, and started to work for some newspapers there, Correio Mercantil and Diário do Rio de Janeiro. By that time, Correio Mercantil was served by other important Brazilian writers like Machado de Assis and Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. After been prevented from publishing some articles in the Correio, Alencar and some of his friends bought the Diário do Rio de Janeiro, where the novelist published his first romances, Cinco Minutos (1856) and A Viuvinha (1857).
Following the partial success of the first writings, Alencar published O Guarani (1857), acquiring nationwide fame. O Guarani was the first of a trilogy about the Brazilian natives - the other two are Iracema (1865) and Ubirajara (1874). In those books the native is dressed as his European counterpart, the medieval knight. Since Brazil hadn't a past (as the European descendants thought), the solution for create a national mythology was to adapt the European manners to tropical values.
The big project of Alencar was, in fact, to affirm in all fields the independence of Brazil. A nationalist, Alencar was even misunderstood by his contemporaries when advocating the use, in literature, of a truly national language (despite the common use of Portuguese language without changes), for example. He also defended the nationalism by many other ways and in many other fields. Two famous contenders of Alencar were Gonçalves Dias and Joaquim Nabuco.
In 1860 Alencar entered on politics (delegate from Rio de Janeiro on Brazil´s congress). In 1877 he was called to be a minister of imperator Dom Pedro II. But soon after, in the same year, he was diagnosed tuberculous, and died in Rio after an unsuccessful attempt to cure himself at Europe.
Works
- Cinco Minutos (1856)
- A Viuvinha (1857)
- O Guarani (1857)
- As Minas de Prata (1862)
- Lucíola (1862)
- Diva (1864)
- Iracema (1865)
- O Gaúcho (1870)
- A Pata da Gazela (1870)
- Sonhos d'Ouro (1872)
- Til (1872)
- A Guerra dos Mascates (1873)
- Ubirajara (1874)
- Senhora (1875)
- O Sertanejo (1875)
- Encarnação (1877 - postmortem edition).fr:José de Alencar