Adolfo Caminha
1867–1897
Biography
Adolfo Ferreira Caminha was a Brazilian novelist of the Naturalist school, born at Aracati in the state of Ceará in 1867. He lost his parents young and was raised by an uncle in Fortaleza. In 1883 he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where a relative had him enrolled in a naval school, and he was promoted to second lieutenant in 1887. After a scandal in Fortaleza the following year he settled in Rio, worked as a civil servant and wrote for newspapers, sometimes under a pseudonym. He died of tuberculosis in 1897, at only twenty-nine.
Naturalism asked writers to study society as closely as a scientist studies a specimen, and Caminha turned that method on the lives of ordinary people. His best-known novel, Bom-Crioulo (1895), is on this site too. It follows a Black sailor in the Brazilian navy and his relationship with a younger sailor in his crew, and its frank treatment of race and same-sex desire provoked controversy when it appeared.
The site also holds A Normalista, a novel of provincial life set in Fortaleza. Its heroine is a young woman training to be a teacher, whose head is full of romances and of marriage, and the book is a bitter portrait of the society around her. Caminha left two novels unfinished when he died, and his reputation rests on the handful of books he did finish.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
A Normalista
by Adolfo Caminha
Maria do Carmo, a young woman training as a teacher in Fortaleza, lives under the roof of her godfather, a clerk named João da Mata, and has a head full of novels and marriage. Adolfo Caminha's novel of 1893 is a bitter, close picture of provincial society in the north-east of…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Bom-Crioulo
by Adolfo Caminha
Bom-Crioulo: The Black Man and the Cabin Boy is a novel by the Brazilian writer Adolfo Caminha, first published in 1895. An English translation by E.A. Lacey was published in 1982 by Gay Sunshine. The novel, whose narrative follows the character Amaro, an ex-slave who works for…
Summary from Wikipedia: Bom-Crioulo (CC BY-SA 4.0)