Machado de Assis

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Machado de Assis: The Critical Legacy

1 Neither Black nor White: The Brazilian Racial Order

2 The Mulatto Author: The Literary Canon and the Racial Contract

3 Black into White: Racial Identity and the Life of Machado de Assis

4 The Public Racial Text: Racial Identity and the Writings of the Unknown Machado

5 The Meta-Mulatto: Racial Identity and the Writings of Machado de Assis

6 The Hidden Racial Text: Racial Identity and the Writings of Machado de Assis

7 Toward Literary Independence: National Identity and the Writings of Machado de Assis

8 The Transformative Vision: Seeing with the Third Eye

9 Machado de Assis: From Romantic Realism to Impressionism

Epilogue: Machado de Assis: An Alternative Interpretation

G. Reginald Daniel with Gary L. Haddow

Notes

References

Index

“This thoughtful, scholarly study illuminates and contextualizes the writings of Brazil’s most famous author while casting him as a universalizing ‘meta-mulatto.’ Traditional critics have argued that Machado’s detached, ironic style, egoistic upper-class characters, and unreliable narrators bespeak indifference to social issues of the day—slavery, racism—and to the debate over literary brasilidade (‘Brazilianness’). . . . Daniel shows that despite Machado’s success, light color, erudition, and European orientation, he was regarded as a racialized other who experienced the dualism of being neither black nor white. Daniel submits that the mulatto dualism serves as a metaphor for a universal dualism that Machado believed characterizes human existence generally. . . . For Machado, the struggle to reconcile binarisms is both personal and universal.”

—D. L. Heyck, Choice