acommonreader.st
A summary of the posts on The Maias by Eça de Queirós, as well as some additional notes. José Maria Eça de Queirós online resources The Maias: resources The Maias discussion: Chapters 1 – 6 The Maias discussion: Chapters 7 – 10 The Maias discussion: Chapters 11 – 14 The Maias discussion: Chapters 15 – […]
Os Vencidos da Vida (Those Defeated by Life)Eça de Queirós in front row with walking stickPhoto from www.arqnet.pt The end of the book comes with mixed feelings: satisfaction from reading such a wonderful novel, dissatisfaction with many characters that cannot develop, and reevaluation of everything that has happened to date. The generational differences are still […]
The melodrama continues… The plot of The Maias is rather thin, standard soap opera fare, but the richness of the telling is the reason to read the book. Not just the characters, but 1880s Portugal comes to life. The relationships between the male characters develop and seem truer to life than most novels. Rarely do […]
One thing that stood out for me in this section is the use of parallels or comparisons, where events echo a previous occurrence or current situation. Some examples: Carlos’ first viewing of Maria Eduara Gomes echoes that of his father, Pedro, seeing Maria Monforte for the first time. Not only their reaction, but their language […]
Eça de Queirós’ novel is a chronicle of the Maia family and, to some extent, of Portugal in the 19th century. While I’m only a quarter of the way through the book, it reminds me of a Benito Pérez Galdós novel I’ve read (which is a good thing). The first six chapters give a quick […]
I started reading The Maias and quickly found myself lost during references to Portuguese history. I’m sure I will find more things I’m ignorant about, but for starters here are a few links that help make sense of the background events in the book: Portuguese history: Fourth Dynasty (1640 – 1910) at Wikipedia More detail […]