19th Century Brazilian Protofantasy: First Manifestations of an Uncanny Genre

Abstract

Fantasy, a part of the Fictional Uncanny, is a literary genre originated from 19^th century British literature that spread during the 20^th century until it reached high levels of popularity. In the Brazilian context, the dissemination of Fantasy was relatively late, as well as its first publications; however, Uncanny stories were frequent among national authors, a fact already documented by literary historiography. In this sense, the objective of this article is to reflect upon the possible Fantasy prototypes and initial publications in Brazilian production, based on essential aspects for the genre that will be explained in the text. For this exercise, we analyze three 19^th century narratives:  Fagundes Varela’s “As bruxas” (1861), Machado de Assis’s “O país das Quimeras” (1862) and Bernardo Guimarães’s novel A ilha maldita (1879).