Eça de Queirós: the short story as travel literature

Abstract

In Eça de Queirós’ short stories travelers tend to assume instrumental roles in often densely descriptive narratives, such as “At the Mill”, “A Lyric Poet”, or “Idiosyncrasies of a Young Blonde Woman”. Traveling, however, is more than a theme in most of them. In this essay, I argue that Queirós’ short stories share structural affinities with other genres, such as the grand tours, sketches, and travelogues. These resemblances serve to highlight the political scope of Eça’s short stories, allowing us to explore contested narratives on the topic of modernization in the Portuguese context, and complicating the premises of the short format.