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Independence from Portugal in 1822 fostered national feeling and ushered in the romantic era, which is generally dated from the appearance in 1836 of volumes of poetry by Domingos JosE GonCalves de MagalhAes, and by Manuel de AraUjo Porto-Alegre. The two major Brazilian romantic poets were AntOnio GonCalves Dias, who glorified the indigenous people and the native soil, and AntOnio de Castro Alves, a leader in the fight for the abolition of slavery. Alves's social awareness introduced a new dimension into the nascent "Brazilianism." A more introspective mood was created by Alvares de Azevedo. The romantic era also witnessed the birth of the novel in Brazil, notably O Guarani (1857) by JosE de Alencar and the later Iracema (1865).
A realist note was sounded by Manuel AntOnio de Almeida in MemOrias de um sargento de milIcias (2 vol., 1854–55) and by Alfredo d'Escragnolle Taunay in his novel InocEncia (1872). The works of the man generally considered the greatest of Brazilian writers, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, were in the same realist vein. His novels and short stories are noted for their psychological depth and classic purity of style. Contemporary with Machado de Assis were the Parnassian poets, headed by Olavo Bilac, but theirs was an isolated trend. Seven years before the appearance of Bilac's Poesias, AluIsio de Azevedo had published O Mulato (1881), a novel that dealt in naturalistic fashion with the Brazilian scene.
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