Machado de Assis, the Brazilian Pyrrhonian


Book Description

For those who study literature, Machado de Assis, the Brazilian Pyrrhonian provides a foundation for understanding one of the most important writers of the Americas. For philosophers, the book reveals a fascinating worldview, thoroughly rooted in the traditions of ancient skepticism.




Machado de Assis


Book Description

"Examines how racial identity and race relations are expressed in the writings of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), Brazil's foremost author of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries"--Provided by publisher.




Machado de Assis


Book Description

A lively and accessible introduction to Machado de Assis and his work




Machado de Assis and Female Characterization


Book Description

This book examines the nature and function of the main female characters in the nine novels of Machado de Assis. The basic argument is that Machado had a particular interest in female characterization and that his fictional women became increasingly sophisticated and complex as he matured and developed as a writer and social commentator. This book argues that Machado developed, especially after 1880 (and what is usually considered the beginning of his “mature” period), a kind of anti-realistic, “new narrative,” one that presents itself as self-referential fictional artifice but one that also cultivates a keen social consciousness. The book also contends that Machado increasingly uses his female characterizations to convey this social consciousness and to show that the new Brazil that is emerging both before and after the establishment of the Brazilian Republic (1889) requires not only the emancipation of the black slaves but the emancipation of its women as well.




Machado de Assis, Blackness, and the Americas


Book Description

Considered a genius in his own lifetime, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908) is Brazil's most canonized writer. Yet, he remains a contested and even enigmatic figure to readers in Brazil and abroad, his relative silence on slavery leaving him vulnerable to charges of aspirations to whiteness. Machado de Assis, Blackness, and the Americas reconsiders this issue by exploring how his prose fiction has been received in the United States. In seven original essays, contributors re-examine his novels and short stories, as well as photographs of the writer, in order to better understand the strategies he employed to navigate Brazil's literary scene as a man of African descent. Framed by a contextualizing introduction and an afterword in the form of a conversation between the editors, the volume speaks to and with our own historical moment and the realities of Black lives in the Americas over the course of the last two centuries.




Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis


Book Description

The first book-length edited collection on Machado de Assis, this volume offers essays on Machado de Assis' work that offer new critical perspectives not only Brazilian literature and history, but also to social, cultural, and political phenomena that continue to have global repercussions.




A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture


Book Description

Cutting-edge and insightful discussions of Latin American literature and culture In the newly revised second edition of A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture, Sara Castro-Klaren delivers an eclectic and revealing set of discussions on Latin American culture and literature by scholars at the cutting edge of their respective fields. The included essays—whether they're written from the perspective of historiography, affect theory, decolonial approaches, or human rights—introduce readers to topics like gaucho literature, postcolonial writing in the Andes, and baroque art while pointing to future work on the issues raised. This work engages with anthropology, history, individual memory, testimonio, and environmental studies. It also explores: A thorough introduction to topics of coloniality, including the mapping of the pre-Columbian Americas and colonial religiosity Comprehensive explorations of the emergence of national communities in New Imperial coordinates, including discussions of the Muisca and Mayan cultures Practical discussions of global and local perspectives in Latin American literature, including explorations of Latin American photography and cultural modalities and cross-cultural connections In-depth examinations of uncharted topics in Latin American literature and culture, including discussions of femicide and feminist performances and eco-perspectives Perfect for students in undergraduate and graduate courses tackling Latin American literature and culture topics, A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture, Second Edition will also earn a place in the libraries of members of the general public and PhD students interested in Latin American literature and culture.




Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature


Book Description

A comprehensive, encyclopedic guide to the authors, works, and topics crucial to the literature of Central and South America and the Caribbean, the Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature includes over 400 entries written by experts in the field of Latin American studies. Most entries are of 1500 words but the encyclopedia also includes survey articles of up to 10,000 words on the literature of individual countries, of the colonial period, and of ethnic minorities, including the Hispanic communities in the United States. Besides presenting and illuminating the traditional canon, the encyclopedia also stresses the contribution made by women authors and by contemporary writers. Outstanding Reference Source Outstanding Reference Book




A Companion to Latin American Literature


Book Description

A Companion to Latin American Literature offers a lively and informative introduction to the most significant literary works produced in Latin America from the fifteenth century until the present day. It shows how the press, and its product the printed word, functioned as the common denominator binding together, in different ways over time, the complex and variable relationship between the writer, the reader and the state. The meandering story of the evolution of Latin American literature - from the letters of discovery written by Christopher Columbus and Vaz de Caminha, via the Republican era at the end of the nineteenth century when writers in Rio de Janeiro as much as in Buenos Aires were beginning to live off their pens as journalists and serial novelists, until the 1960s when writers of the quality of Clarice Lispector in Brazil and García Márquez in Colombia suddenly burst onto the world stage - is traced chronologically in six chapters which introduce the main writers in the main genres of poetry, prose, the novel, drama, and the essay. A final chapter evaluates the post-boom novel, testimonio, Latino and Brazuca literature, gay, Afro-Hispanic and Afro-Brazilian literature, along with the Novel of the New Millennium. This study also offers suggestions for further reading. STEPHEN M. HART is Professor of Hispanic Studies, University College London, and Profesor Honorario, Universidad de San Marcos, Lima.




The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas


Book Description

"One of the wittiest, most playful, and . . . most alive and ageless books ever written." --Dave Eggers, The New Yorker A revelatory new translation of the playful, incomparable masterpiece of one of the greatest Black authors in the Americas A Penguin Classic The mixed-race grandson of ex-slaves, Machado de Assis is not only Brazil's most celebrated writer but also a writer of world stature, who has been championed by the likes of Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, Allen Ginsberg, John Updike, and Salman Rushdie. In his masterpiece, the 1881 novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (translated also as Epitaph of a Small Winner), the ghost of a decadent and disagreeable aristocrat decides to write his memoir. He dedicates it to the worms gnawing at his corpse and tells of his failed romances and halfhearted political ambitions, serves up harebrained philosophies, and complains with gusto from the depths of his grave. Wildly imaginative, wickedly witty, and ahead of its time, the novel has been compared to the work of everyone from Cervantes to Sterne to Joyce to Nabokov to Borges to Calvino, and has influenced generations of writers around the world. This new English translation is the first to include extensive notes providing crucial historical and cultural context. Unlike other editions, it also preserves Machado's original chapter breaks--each of the novel's 160 short chapters begins on a new page--and includes excerpts from previous versions of the novel never before published in English. For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.