Rebeldia e oportunismo: uma história do Diabo Queirosiano

Abstract

Eça de Queirós, known asthe most representative writer of the Portuguese Realism, -style that postulates the analysis of the present in refusal of the romantic look to the past–several times revisited the Middle Ages in his production. Eça managed to do that in his works by the treatment of themes and the use of medieval literary genres, such as the lives of the Saints, hagiographies publishedin the last decade of his life which were called by him Neoflam-santoro. Within this broad spectrum of possibilities, this paper seeks to focus on the devil's work featured in A Relíquia (The Relic). It is aimed to discuss how the Devil’s figure, full of symbolism and present in different works of the writer, works as the main stone of his criticism to wards the Catholic Church, the institutionalized religion and its pernicious consequences on the conformation of Portuguese society. The Queirosian Satan is are interpretation of the medieval diabolical figure that serves asa way of emphasizing the criticism of manners, arrogance and hypocrisy of the Portuguese society of eight hundred.