No two literary historians of Brazil agree upon a plan of presentation. Fernandez Pinheiro (1872) and De Carvalho (1919) reduce the phases to a minimum of three; the first, somewhat too neatly, divides them into that of the Formative Period (XVIth through XVIIth century), the Period of Development (XVIIIth century), the Period of Reform (XIXth century); the talented De Carvalho accepts Romero’s first period, from 1500 to 1750, calling it that of Portuguese dominance, inserts a Transition period from 1750 to the date of the triumph of French Romanticism in 1830, and labels the subsequent phase the Autonomous epoch. This is better than Wolf’s five divisions (1863) and the no less than sixteen suggested by the restless Romero in the résumé that he wrote in 1900 for the _Livro do Centenario_. I am inclined, on the whole, to favour the division suggested by Romero in his _Historia da Literatura Brasileira_ (1902).[24] Period of Formation: 1500-1750 Autonomous Development: 1750-1830 Romantic Transformation: 1830-1870 Critical, Naturalist Reaction, followed by Parnassians, Symbolists, etc.: 1870- The fourth division allows for the decidedly eclectic tendencies subsequent upon the decline of Romanticism. Accordingly, the four chapters that follow will deal succinctly with these successive phrases of the nation’s literature. Not so much separate works or men as the suffusing spirit will engage our attention; what we are here interested in is the formation and development of the Brazilian imaginative creative personality and its salient products.[25] FOOTNOTES: [1] London, 1905. Page 113. [2] Cf. Spanish and Portuguese _brasa_, a live coal. Also, English brazier. [3] Le Roman au Brésil. Paris, 1918. [4] Sylvio Romero (See _Litteratura Contemporanea_, Rio de Janeiro, no date, pages 45-46, chapter upon the poet Luiz Murat) refers in characteristic fashion to the Brazilian habit of overstating the case of the native imagination. There is no audacious flight, he declares; no soaring of eagles and condors. “Whether we examine the popular literature or the cultured, we find overwhelming proof of this assertion. Our popular novels and anonymous songs are scant in plot, ingenious imaginings, marvelous imagery, which are so common in their Slavic, Celtic, Greek and Germanic congeners. And the contribution brought by the negroes and indigenous tribes are even poorer than the part that came to us from the Portuguese. Cultivated literature … is even inferior to the popular productions from the standpoint of the imagination.… Our imagination, which is of simply decorative type, is the imagination of lyric spirits, of the sweet, monodic poetry of new souls and young peoples.”