Bernardo Guimarães
1825–1884
Biography
Bernardo Joaquim da Silva Guimarães was born in Ouro Preto, in what is now the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, on 15 August 1825, and he died in the same town on 10 March 1884. He wrote both poetry and novels. The Brazilian Academy of Letters chose him as the patron of its fifth chair, which keeps his name alive in the country's literary life.
His best-known novel is A Escrava Isaura (1875). It tells the story of an enslaved young woman on a plantation whose owner pursues her, and it was written as an attack on slavery, which made it one of the most widely read Brazilian novels of its day. He also wrote O Seminarista, a novel about a young man in a seminary, and he introduced into Brazilian poetry the verso bestialógico, a comic, deliberately nonsensical verse that still keeps a strict metre. Some of his poems in that style are sexually frank.
Two of his novels are on this site, A escrava Isaura and O Garimpeiro. O Garimpeiro is set among the gold prospectors of Minas Gerais, the province where he was born. Together the two books show the range of a writer who dealt with the cruelties of slavery and with the rough world of the gold country.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
A escrava Isaura: romance
by Bernardo Guimarães
A Escrava Isaura (Portuguese pronunciation: [a (i)ʃˈkɾavɐ iˈzawɾɐ], Isaura, The Slave Girl) is a novel written by the Brazilian writer Bernardo Guimarães. It was first published in 1875 by Casa Garnier publishers in Rio de Janeiro. With this novel, Bernardo Guimarães became very…
Summary from Wikipedia: A Escrava Isaura (novel) (CC BY-SA 4.0)O Garimpeiro
by Bernardo Guimarães
Bernardo Guimarães opens in the lovely country of Araxá, Patrocínio and Bagagem in Minas Gerais, where the garimpeiros, the free diamond-hunters, work the rivers. The novel follows a young prospector, love, rivalry and the lure of the stone, with an eye for the landscape of the…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.O Seminarista
by Bernardo Guimarães
Eugênio and Margarida grow up as neighbours on the farms of the Minas Gerais countryside and fall in love as children, until Eugênio's parents decide that he must become a priest. Bernardo Guimarães's novel of 1872 sets a tender country romance against the Church's demands and…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.