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Publication Date
2019
Description
This book makes the argument that Machado de Assis, hailed as one of Latin American literature’s greatest writers, was also a major theoretician of the modern novel form. Steeped in the works of Western literature and an imaginative reader of French Symbolist poetry, Machado creates, between 1880 and 1908, a “new narrative,” one that will presage the groundbreaking theories of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure by showing how even the language of narrative cannot escape being elusive and ambiguous in terms of meaning. It is from this discovery about the nature of language as a self-referential semiotic system that Machado crafts his “new narrative.” Long celebrated in Brazil as a dazzlingly original writer, Machado has struggled to gain respect and attention outside the Luso-Brazilian ken. He is the epitome of the “outsider” or “marginal,” the iconoclastic and wildly innovative genius who hails from a culture rarely studied in the Western literary hierarchy and so consigned to the status of “eccentric.” Had the Brazilian master written not in Portuguese but English, French, or German, he would today be regarded as one of the true exemplars of the modern novel, in expression as well as in theory.
Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
Keywords
Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, Latin American Studies, Philosophy, Critical, and Social Theory
Rights
Copyright © 2019 by Earl E. Fitz All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Please contact Hildreth-Mirza Hall, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837-2005.
Type
text; 222 pages
Language
eng
ISBN
9781684481163; eISBN; PDF