Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis (New Directions in Latino American Cultures)

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. Front Matter....Pages i-xxxii Introduction....Pages 1-10 Front Matter....Pages 11-11 Machado de Assis: Creator and Character in a Troubled Scene....Pages 13-25 Machado de Assis and Realism: A Literary Genealogy....Pages 27-36 Machado de Assis and Pascal....Pages 37-51 Front Matter....Pages 53-53 The Legacy of Slavery: Tales of Gender and Racial Violence in Machado de Assis....Pages 55-69 Machado de Assis: From “Tragic Mulatto” to Human Tragicomedy....Pages 71-90 “Father versus Mother”: Slavery and Its Apparatuses....Pages 91-103 The “Chinese Question” in Machado’s Journalism....Pages 105-122 Front Matter....Pages 123-123 Writing Womanhood in the New Brazil: Machado’s Lição de Botânica ....Pages 125-147 Capitu’s Curiosity: Undecidability and Questions of Gender in Dom Casmurro ....Pages 149-162 Front Matter....Pages 163-163 Machado’s Wounded Males....Pages 165-179 Homoaffectivity Exemplified in Dom Casmurro ....Pages 181-187 Masculinity and Matrimonial Secrets in Dom Casmurro ....Pages 189-207 Front Matter....Pages 209-209 Machado’s Tales of the Fantastic: Allegory and the Macabre....Pages 211-222 Machado de Assis and the Secret Heart of Literature....Pages 223-238 Framing Violence: Narrator and Reader in “Pai contra mãe”....Pages 239-249 Back Matter....Pages 251-264 This book brings forth new critical perspectives from some of the most notable scholars in Brazilian literature and history on one of the great writers and cultural minds of nineteenth-century Latin America. Machado de Assis's innovative writing style and impactful works in literature, theater, and journalism, has left an indelible mark on the letters of Brazil, Latin America, and the world, influencing innumerable writers and cultural talents of his generation and those that followed including Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag, Woody Allen, and José Saramago. Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis elicits new critical perspectives on topics as diverse as national identity, slavery, modernity, politics, skepticism, genre, race, and gender. Through and examination of Machado de Assis's life and work this volume provides an important glimpse not only into Brazil's past, also to social, cultural, and political phenomena that continue to have global repercussions