Gouaches: picturalismo e poema em prosa

Abstract

Through a close reading of the texts collected in João Barreira’s Gouaches (1892), broadly classifi ed as prose poems, this study aims to shed some light on a key feature of this hybrid and problematic genre: its pictorial inclination. In reality, from the pioneering attempts of Aloysius Bertrand up to the more challenging later endeavours, the symbolist prose poem de fi ned itself through inter-artistic instability, drawing upon pain ting, sculpture or decorative arts.