Clavis Libri

Theme

Desire

Wanting: pleasure, appetite, temptation, longing for what one does not have.

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert

the desire copied, along the thread that runs through the work, and the ball as poison in Part I - The Ball as Poison.

Quincas Borba

Machado de Assis

the temptation in the garden (chapter XXVIII), the proposal under the moon (chapter XL), the titled brides with Sofia's face (chapter LXXXII), Maria Benedita's love, which loves as one loves God (chapter CXVIII), the lover's delirium in the coupé (chapter CLIII), and Sofia's desire that turns into a whim (chapter CLXIII).

The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas

Machado de Assis

Marcela (chapter XV), Eugênia's kiss (chapter XXXIII), the waltz with Virgília (chapter L), the little house (chapter LXVII), the mountaintop (chapter LXXXV), and the low wall (chapter CXI).

Inferno

Dante Alighieri

the she-wolf that is never sated (canto I), the appetite that overcomes reason in Francesca (canto V), the gluttonous of Cerberus and Ciacco (canto VI), the avaricious and the prodigal without measure (canto VII), Dante's pleasure in seeing Argenti sunk (canto VIII), and the mad flight of Ulysses (canto XXVI).