Machado de Assis: Toward a Poetics of Emulation (Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture) - Softcover

De Castro Rocha, Joćo Cezar

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1611861810 ISBN 13: 9781611861815

Publisher: Michigan State University Press, 2015

Synopsis

This book offers an alternative explanation for one of the core dilemmas of Brazilian literary criticism: the “midlife crisis” Machado de Assis underwent from 1878 to 1880, the result of which was the writing of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brįs Cubas, as well as the remarkable production of his mature years—with an emphasis on his masterpiece, Dom Casmurro.

At the center of this alternative explanation, Castro Rocha situates the fallout from the success enjoyed by Eēa de Queirós with the publication of Cousin Basķlio and Machado’s two long texts condemning the author and his work. Literary and aesthetic rivalries come to the fore, allowing for a new theoretical framework based on a literary appropriation of “thick description,” the method proposed by anthropologist Clifford Geertz. From this method, Castro Rocha derives his key hypothesis: an unforeseen consequence of Machado’s reaction to Eēa’s novel was a return to the classical notion of aemulatio, which led Machado to develop a “poetics of emulation.”

About this title

About the Author

Joćo Cezar de Castro Rocha is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. He is the Endowed Chair Machado de Assis of Latin American Studies (Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana / Brazilian Embassy, Mexico, 2010), and he has edited more than twenty books, among which are a collection of six volumes of Machado de Assis’s short stories.

Review

“Acute, captivating, beautifully written and translated, this is a masterly reinterpretation of one of the world’s greatest novelists. By subtle close reading and a groundbreaking, innovative approach, Joćo Cezar de Castro Rocha unfolds in front of our eyes the subtle, ramified, mimetic complexity of Machado de Assis’s genius, along with the anxieties of its formation.”
—Pierpaolo Antonello, University of Cambridge

Edition details

• Publisher: Michigan State University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1611861810
• ISBN 13: 9781611861815
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 308