ABSTRACT
This article studies the way Joaquim Manuel de Macedo’s first novels and plays use a concrete symbolic form, the extravagance of his young protagonists, to defuse the disruptive potential that a new form of life causes to the patriarchal ideology. This article also faces the question of the inadequacy between the modern literary form and the Brazilian social reality, defending Macedo’s ingenious formal solutions to this problem.
KEYWORDS:
Joaquim Manuel de Macedo; Brazilian literature; literary form.