ObiedzinskiOnDostoevskii

 This is a an informal critique I wrote up for class: Machado de Assis Anticipating Postmodernism Machado de Assis subverts Modernist conceptions of the novel through defamiliarization, resulting in a deterritorialization of national Lusophone discourse in 1880s Rio de Janeiro and thus a reterritorialization of language and knowledge within that national discourse, thereby anticipating the Postmodernist movement in literature. “The emergence of the modernist novel, for example, is widely perceived as an exclusively European phenomenon” (Earl E. Fitz, “ The Memorias Postumas de Bras Cubas As (Proto) Type of the Modernist Novel: A Problem In Literary History And Interpretation” 7). Defining characteristics of the Realist novel include: a presupposed structure, a style that portrays objective reality, a reliable narrator, and linearity in terms of chronological presentation of events. In Posthumous Memoirs , Machado de Assis defamiliarizes the reader of Modernist literature and ...

  Machado de Assis and the Nature of the Soul in “The Mirror.”   In “The Mirror,” Machado de Assis begins the story with the gentlemen, or “four or five metaphysical detectives” (444) gathered in a house overlooking the Metropolis of Rio de Janeiro discussing “Lofty matters.” Right away we notice the phrase, “four or five,” because of its uncertainty or ambiguity. We come to find out that Jacobina is the one singled out from discourse as he is on a different plane altogether. For one, as opposed to the gentlemen of the city, Jacobina hails “from the provinces, wealthy, intelligent, not educated.” Here de Assis suggests that Jacobina, although “intelligent”—meaning he has accumulated knowledge and is aware of philosophical debates—he lacks the capacity to correctly apply that scientific knowledge to the discussion of metaphysics. Perhaps Jacobina is “not educated” in the physical sciences or “laws of nature” explained by materialism, empiricism and rationality of Western ...