The central proposal of this work is to argue concerning the place the past occupies in the critical formulations of the writer Jose de Alencar (1829-1877). The main hypothesis is that the necessity of affirmation of a modern autoconsciousness is a point that covers the critical thought of Alencar, as much as at the moment where he thinks about himself and his role on the world, as much as in the occasion where he weaves formulations about the Brazilian literature formation. The conduction of the analysis is marked out by two main literary controversies where the writer was involved in 19th century, the first one in the fifties with the famous Gonçalves de Magalhães and the second one in the seventies with the young Joaquim Nabuco. I suggest that, in both, Alencar searchs for in a bond with the past a necessary starting point for the affirmation of a modern conscience in the present, considering the time as a continuous relation between past, present and future.