national identity based on Indian ancestry and the rich nature of the country. These traits first appeared in Gonçalves Dias' narrative poem I-Juca-Pirama, but soon became widespread. The consolidation of this subgenre (Indianism) is found in two famous novels by José de Alencar: The Guarani, about a family of Portuguese colonists who took Indians as servants but were later slain by an enemy tribe, and Iracema, about a Portuguese shipwrecked man who lives among the Indians and marries a beautiful Indian woman. Iracema is especially lyrical, opening with five paragraphs of pure free-style prose poetry describing the title character. Realism The decline of Romanticism, along with a series of social transformations, occurred in the middle of the 19th century. A new form of prose writing emerged, including analysis of the indigenous people and description of the environment, in the regionalist authors (such as Franklin Távora and João Simões Lopes Neto). Under the influence of Naturalism and of writers like Émile Zola, Aluísio Azevedo wrote O Cortiço, with characters that represent all social classes and categories of the time. Brazilian Realism was not very original at first, but it took on extraordinary importance because of Machado de Assis and Euclides da Cunha. Machado de Assis Usually appointed as the greatest Brazilian writer of all times, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908) is also the most important writer of Brazilian Realism. Born in Rio de Janeiro City (by the time, imperial capital of Brazil), he was the natural son of a half-black wallpainter and a Portuguese woman, whose only education, besides literacy classes, was the extensive reading of borrowed books. Working as typesetter at a publishing house, he was soon acquainted with most of the world's literature and became fluent in English and French. In his early career he wrote several best-selling novels (including A Mão e a Luva and Ressurreição) which, despite their overzealous Romanticism, already show his vivacious humour and some of his pessimism towards the conventions of society. After being introduced to Realism, Machado de Assis changed his style and his themes, producing some of the most remarkable prose ever written in Portuguese. The style served as the medium for his corrosive humour and his intense pessimism, which was very far from the plain conceptions of his contemporaries. Machado's most crucial works include: Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas), the fictional autobiography of a