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.
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