About this book
Bom senso e bom gosto by Manuel Roussado leaps into the heated literary debates of 19th‑century Portugal with a spirited response to Antero de Quental’s letter to António Feliciano de Castilho. This compact yet forceful literary polemic and pamphlet argues for standards of taste, civility, and critical judgment amid the cultural shifts of the 1860s. Roussado’s prose engages contemporary disputes over tradition and modernity, defending aesthetic criteria while exposing the rhetorical tensions that electrified Lisbon’s salons and newspapers.
The second, augmented edition collected here includes an additional anonymous missive received from abroad, offering readers a broader view of the controversy and the public appetite for polemical exchange. As both a primary historical document and an essay on aesthetics, the work illuminates the personalities and ideas that shaped Portuguese letters in a pivotal era.
Ideal for students of Portuguese literature, historians of 19th‑century European intellectual life, and listeners who enjoy spirited nonfiction debate, this audiobook provides a vivid snapshot of cultural conflict and the arguments that defined a generation’s sense of taste.
