ABSTRACT
Although Bom-Crioulo is the last naturalist novel to be written in the nineteenth century, it is not the last Brazilian naturalist novel. Flora Siissekind takes the point a little further when she says that, besides the naturalist episode of the 1930s, also in the 1970s there were naturalist novels such as Aguinaldo Silva's O crime antes da festa, Jose Louzeiro's Acusado de homicidio, and Renado Pompeu's Quatro-Olhos. Siissekind discusses these three phases of naturalism and links them with the sciences they are related to. Naturalism is nothing but the literary practice which has addressed the rifts, discontinuities and contradictions the Brazilian nation has faced in several moments of its history. It of course addresses power in its forms of relations and prohibitions. It is central to the practice that this address be oblique, confused, and even incomplete.
