About José de Alencar José Martiniano de Alencar (May 1, 1829 – December 12, 1877) was a Brazilian novelist. Born in Messejana, a small town near Fortaleza - Ceará, in northeast of Brazil. Alencar was the son of an important senator, José Martiniano de Alencar, and the cousin of the later, Ana Josefina de Alencar.After earning a bachelor's degree in Law he traveled to Rio de Janeiro, and started to work for the newspapers Correio Mercantil and Diário do Rio de Janeiro. At that time, Correio Mercantil employed other important Brazilian writers like Machado de Assis and Joaquim Manuel de Macedo. After being prevented from publishing certain articles in the Correio, Alencar and some of his friends bought the Diário do Rio de Janeiro, where the novelist published his first romances, Cinco Minutos (1856) and A viuvinha (1857). Following the partial success of the first writings, Alencar published O Guarany (1857), acquiring nationwide fame. O Guarani was the first of a trilogy about the Brazilian natives - the other two are Iracema (1865) and Ubirajara (1874). In those books the native is dressed as his European counterpart, the medieval knight. Since Brazil had no past (as the descendants of European immigrants thought), the solution was to create a national mythology that adapted European manners to tropical values. However this reading is conservative and has become rather outdated, as many recent studies have shown. Alencar's grand project was to affirm the independence of Brazil in all fields . A nationalist, Alencar was misunderstood by his contemporaries when he advocated the literary use of a truly national language, despite the common use of the Portuguese language in Brazil without changes. He also defended nationalism in many other ways and in many other fields. Two famous rivals of Alencar were Antônio Gonçalves Dias and Joaquim Nabuco. In 1860 Alencar entered politics as a delegate from Rio de Janeiro to Brazil's congress. In 1877 he was summoned to be a minister by Emperor Pedro II. But in the same year, Alencar was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and died in Rio de Janeiro after an unsuccessful attempt to cure himself in Europe. Pseudonyms: AC; Senio; G.M.; Erasmo; J. de Al; Job; Um Asno; Ig; Serio.