Description
Book SynopsisA translation (from the original Portuguese) of the author's study of Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis (1839-1908). It focuses on Machado's "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas". It investigates how social structure gets internalized as literary form, arguing that Machado's style reveals the embedded class divisions of 19th-century Brazil.
Trade Review“A brilliant and penetrating analysis of Machado’s
Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas. This is the kind of reading that transforms one’s understanding of the novel. After reading Schwarz, it is impossible to see Machado in the same light as before. Exemplary of what literary analysis can and should be, this seminal study transcends its focus on Brazilian literature and becomes a model for literary critics. “—Randal Johnson, University of California, Los Angeles
“This is a masterpiece of criticism. The coherence of Schwarz’s perspective and the clarity with which he elaborates the economic and cultural insights that form his dialectical approach to literature make his study a paradigmatic one for theoretical enterprise. By concentrating his interpretive talents on Machado’s style, Schwarz also illuminates a question that has puzzled many present Machado readers: Why do we find him so satisfylingly contemporary?”—Leslie Damasceno, Duke University
Table of ContentsIntroduction / John Gledson
Preface
1. Initial Observations
2. A Formal Principle
3. The Practical Matrix
4. Some Implications of the Prose
5. The Social Aspect of the Narrator and the Plot
6. The Fate of the Poor
7. The Rich on Their Own
8. The Role of Ideas
9. Questions of Form
10. Literary Accumulation in a Periferal Country
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
