Machado De Assis

The Brazilian Master and His Novels

Helen Caldwell

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520358560
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520311961
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Machado de Assis is among the most original creative minds in Brazil's rich, four-century-long literary tradition. Caldwell's critical and biographical study explores Machado's purpose, meaning, and artistic method in each of his nine novels, published between 1872 and 1908. She traces the ideas and recurrent themes, and identifies his affinities with other authors. In tracing Machado's experimentation with narrative techniques, Caldwell reveals the increasingly subtle use he made of point of view, sometimes indirect or reflected, sometimes multiple and "nested" like Chinese boxes. Caldwell shows the increasing sureness with which he individualized his characters, and how, in advance of his time, he developed action, not by realistic detail, but by the boldest use of allusion and symbol. Each novel is shown to be an artistic venture, and not in any sense a regurgitation from a sick soul as some critics have argued. IN searching out the unity of his novels, Caldwell explores the other aspects of Machado's intellectual life--as poet,journalist, playwright, conversationalist, and academician. Of particular interest is her attention to his shift away from the social criticism of his early novels into the labyrinth of individual psychology in the last five--all of which rank among the world literature. But this perceptive account never loses sight of the one element present in every piece of Machado's fiction, in eery one of his personages; that is, superlative comedy, in its whole range: wit, irony, satire, parody, burlesque, humor. Altogether, Caldwell reveals to us a writer, in essence a poet, who is still the altus prosator of Brazilian letters. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1970.

Many titles in the Voices Revived program are also newly available as ebooks, offered at a discounted price to support wider access to scholarly work.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTORY- BEFORE THE NOVELS
• CHAPTER ONE THE WIDTH OF THE RUA DO OUVIDOR
• CHAPTER TWO VITAL STATISTICS
• CHAPTER THREE MAN OF LETTERS
• CHAPTER FOUR THE THIRD WOMAN
• FIRST FOUR NOVELS
• CHAPTER FIVE FICTION AND THEATER
• CHAPTER SIX RESURRECTION
• CHAPTER SEVEN HAND AND GLOVE
• CHAPTER EIGHT HELENA
• CHAPTER NINE YAYA GARCIA
• POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRAZ CUBAS
• CHAPTER TEN CUBAS'S LIGHTER SIDE- THE PICARO
• CHAPTER ELEVEN MELANCHOLY AND AN EPIC HERO
• CHAPTER TWELVE PUBLIC OPINION— THE WORMS
• QUINCAS BORBA AND DOM CASMURRO
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN QUINCAS BORBA
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN DOM CASMURRO'
• LAST TWO NOVELS: ESAU AND JACOB AND AYRES'S MEMORIAL
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN AYRES NARRATOR
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN AYRES’S ODYSSEY
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ASSIS’S ODYSSEY OR QUEEN CAROLINE’S HEAD
• EPILOGUE
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY
• NOTES
• INDEX