Eduardo Loureco affirms, in the foreword of his book Sentido e forma da poesia neo-realista [Meaning and form in neorealist poetry]: "Neorealism as a relevant literary reality was born only after the development of its theory, like a garment for an Ideology demanded by its historical power, prospects, and potential universality". As an intellectual that belonged to the generation that built the theory, but younger than his main companions, Lourenco started his critical career in another moment, when the theory had already been developed and many literary works had been published. In this paper, we take into account Lourenco's first critical essays, published at Vertice review, whose subjects are Carlos de Oliveira's and Fernando Namora's novels. There he underlines the importance of neorealism and, at the same time, establishes a deeply honest discussion about the fragilities of the literary movement in a time when it was starting to ascend to an hegemonic position in Portuguese Literature.
