Peixoto, Júlio Afrânio (1876–1947)

Júlio Afrânio Peixoto (b. 17 December 1876; d. 12 January 1947), Brazilian author and physician. A polymath whose more than fifty books range from medical texts to regionalist novels to literary studies to history and folklore, he epitomized the spirit of his premodernist generation with the phrase "Literature is the smile of society." His novel A esfinge (1911; The Sphinx), written to justify his election to the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1910, documents life in Rio's high society. Like his other novels, such as Maria Bonita (1914), it explores female psychology and the contrasts between city and country life.

Trained in forensic medicine, Peixoto centered his career on health education and public administration. He was director of the national asylum (from 1904), professor of hygiene and legal medicine at the Rio de Janeiro medical school (from 1906) and at the law school (from 1915), director of public education in Rio de Janeiro (from 1916), and professor of the history of education at the Instituto do Rio de Janeiro (from 1932). He represented Bahia as a federal deputy from 1924 to 1930.

See alsoLiterature: Brazil .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Peixoto, Obras literárias completas (1944), has twenty-five volumes. Leonídio Ribeiro, ed., Afrânio Peixoto (1950), includes a biography, critical studies, and a bibliography. Brito Broca, A vida literária no Brasil: 1900 (1956), provides a study of Peixoto's milieu.

                                      Dain Borges