CARVALHO JÚNIOR: A lustful poet.

Abstract

Even though he is one of the most expressive poets of the 1870 generation, Carvalho Júnior continues forgotten in our literature. Due to the too lewd and spicy verses for the taste of his time, the poet ended up being relegated to the second plan in the literary studies, remaining as a mere figure of transition between Romanticism and Parnassianism. Bearing in mind that times are different and that eroticism is no longer viewed with a bad eye in literature, the objective of this article is to bring and to discuss some of its poetic productions, in order to demonstrate its qualities, despite any moralizing view of his work. To this end, we begin by drawing a brief overview of who Carvalho Júnior was, what and where he wrote, as well as the main influences of his work; we continue with the presentation of some formal elements of Hespérides, second section of the book Parisina (1879), and then we discuss about the eroticism contained in its verses; then we made a relationship between Carvalho Júnior's loving cannibalism and that of Brazil's literary tradition; and, finally, we question ourselves about its place in the history of Brazilian poetry.