Although the schools of Brazilian realism and naturalism manifested themselves almost concurrently, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis dominated the literary scene by developing a mordant social critique of Rio de Janeiro’s bourgeoisie throughout the second half of the 19th century in a prose form close to realism but without its documentary impulse. A lower-class mulato (of mixed African and European ancestry) from Rio, Machado de Assis grew up in a cultured household where his parents were servants, and he eventually ascended the sociocultural ladder. Employing a narrative style considered “modern”—given his deft use of point of view, first-person narration, and subtle irony—Machado de Assis broadened the horizon of the Brazilian novel with Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas (1881; “The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas”; Eng. trans. Epitaph of a Small Winner), the capricious upper-class cynical and intrusive narrator of which speaks from the grave, and with Dom Casmurro (1899; Eng. trans. Dom Casmurro), a fictional autobiography by a narrator who suspects his wife of adultery, an act never proved to have actually occurred, owing to the novel’s first-person narration. While Machado’s penultimate novel, Esaú e Jacó (1904; Esau and Jacob), harbours strong allegorical implications regarding the tension between monarchy and republicanism, his last work, Memorial de Ayres (1908; Counselor Ayres’ Memorial), a novel in the form of a diary, takes place during the days of the abolition of slavery (1888) and the declaration of the republic (1889). Yet it focuses primarily upon the enduring power of love. Although racism and slavery do not occupy centre stage in his works, these topics do emerge in his novels via secondary characters as well as in his crônicas (literally, “chronicles”; brief prose sketches) and in a few of his more than 200 short stories. These stories portray psychological and philosophical themes ranging from sex and madness to self-delusion, perversion, frustration, social class, injustice, caprice, and other human follies. The Brazilian Academy of Letters was founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1896 by Machado de Assis, who also served as its president, and several of his contemporaries.

Two authors closely identified with the naturalist school who were writing during Machado de Assis’s time are Aluízio Azevedo and Adolfo Caminha. Azevedo’s naturalist and somewhat melodramatic novels deal primarily with environmental determinism and denounce social evils. Three novels are representative of Azevedo’s contribution to Brazilian literature: O mulato (1881; “The Mulatto”), on racial prejudice, Casa de pensão (1884; “The Boarding House”), on the effects of detrimental social forces upon the individual, and O cortiço (1890; A Brazilian Tenement), influenced by the French novelist Émile Zola, on the outcasts of society, who struggle with money, sex, prejudice, and social position. Caminha’s Bom-Crioulo (1895; Eng. trans. Bom-Crioulo: The Black Man and the Cabin Boy) is a landmark naturalist text because of its black protagonist as well as its open treatment of homosexuality. With their portrayals of human passions, Caminha’s works often depict the violent and unseemly sides of urban life.

Many authors, such as Azevedo and the pre-Modernist Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto, incorporated the tenets of the philosophy of positivism in the dialogues and actions of their characters. Founded by the Frenchman Auguste Comte as a philosophy of the history of the mind via science, positivism appeared in Brazil in the mid-1850s. It was the reigning philosophy there during the abolitionist and republican movements, and the positivist motto “Ordem e progresso” (“Order and progress”) was incorporated into Brazil’s national flag. Lima Barreto’s work is significant for its documented opposition to Brazil’s racial hierarchy as depicted in his novel Vida e morte de M.J. Gonzaga de Sá (1919; The Life and Death of M.J. Gonzaga de Sá). He is also noted for his use of caricature, ridicule, and satire in his masterpiece, Triste fim de Policarpo Quaresma (1915; “The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma”; Eng. trans. The Patriot), a critique of the Brazilian First Republic and a denunciation of the blind patriotism of ufanismo, a modern, hyperbolic version of nativism.

Beginning in the late 1870s as a response to Romanticism and continuing into the early part of the 20th century, Parnassianism surfaced as a poetry movement advocating “art for art’s sake.” Primarily opposed to Romanticism’s unbridled sensibility and unrestrained poetic forms, Parnassianism heralded artistic control, polish, elegance, objectivity, and impassiveness. The three outstanding Parnassian poets of Brazil are Raimundo Correia, Alberto de Oliveira, and Olavo Bilac. Symbolism evolved from Romanticism in the late 19th century and employed the imaginative use of extended metaphors suggestive of reveries and mystical states. Influenced by the French poet Charles Baudelaire and his theme of decadence, Symbolists in Brazil also experimented with metrics, repetition, sound effects, and other musical elements. The greatest Brazilian Symbolist poet was João da Cruz e Sousa, born to freed slaves, who wrote abolitionist verse and was active in the antislavery movement.