Epistolary dialogues: Eça de Queiroz and the Portuguese scenes

Abstract

Since the Eça de Queiroz’s death, in the year of 1900, a serie of editions sought to bring together different epistolary collections from the writer: letters of his work in the Consulate, intimate letters exchanged between his wife, children and friends, professional letters to his editors. In these private discourses were revealed aspects of his personality, literary projects, reviews and critiques of his work published or in the creation process. In his epistolography we found, for example, the extensive project of the Portuguese Scenes – idealized in the second half of the 1870s. In the lines of these letters exchanged between Eça, his editor Ernesto Chardron and his friends, we find the speech live, imaginative and clever characteristic of queirozian prose. It is about of the conception process and development of the Portuguese Scenes that’s what this article.