@article {Newcomb1, author = {Robert Patrick Newcomb}, title = {Figurations of the Negra in Gon{\c c}alves Crespo and Caetano da Costa Alegre}, volume = {56}, number = {2}, pages = {1--19}, year = {2019}, doi = {10.3368/lbr.56.2.1}, publisher = {University of Wisconsin Press}, abstract = {This paper analyzes two poems, by Gon{\c c}alves Crespo and Caetano da Costa Alegre, both entitled {\textquotedblleft}A negra,{\textquotedblright} and dating from 1882 and 1884. My comparison focuses on the writers{\textquoteright} revindications of the figure of the negra. Drawing on Alfredo Bosi{\textquoteright}s understanding of historically-situated, {\textquotedblleft}resistant{\textquotedblright} literary texts, I argue that the poems show their writers grappling with{\textemdash}and partially subverting{\textemdash}poetic conventions that were hostile to the affirmation of the beauty and dignity of African and Afro-diasporic women, particularly in comparison to the figure of the loira, a commonplace of nineteenth-century Portuguese poetry. The poems pushed the boundaries of what could be said concerning race and beauty in late-nineteenth-century Portuguese verse, while respecting certain conventions so as to be formally and conceptually {\textquotedblleft}legible.{\textquotedblright} I contend that we should understand these poems in terms of Bosi{\textquoteright}s ideology/counter-ideology dyad, as exercises in ideological and poetic negotiation rather than examples of uncritical conformity, or of a radicalism that, per Bosi, would have been unavailable to these writers.}, issn = {0024-7413}, URL = {https://lbr.uwpress.org/content/56/2/1}, eprint = {https://lbr.uwpress.org/content/56/2/1.full.pdf}, journal = {Luso-Brazilian Review} }