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This book analyses the relationships between the writers Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire and Machado de Assis, showing their impact on representations of literary modernity and literary national identity in the Americas. The central argument is that Machado de Assis parodied Baudelaire by criticizing the French influence on Brazilian literature of his time, as well as emulating Poe by searching for a Pan-American identity in the representation of the urban scene, nationalism, the female figure and the world of work. Pan-Americanism emerges from both Poe's and Machado de Assis's critical reflections on literary national identity in non-hegemonic contexts as a way of deconstructing the idea of literary modernity.
List of contents
CONTENTS: The Representation of the Urban Scenes in Poe and Machado: Literary Modernity as a European Simulacrum in Non-Hegemonic Context - Nation, Literary Nationality and Literary National Identity in Machado de Assis and Edgar Allan Poe - Female Representation in Poe, Baudelaire and Machado de Assis as a Metaphor of Cultural Liberty in Contexts of Literary Imitation - The Brazilian Labor Market as a Simulacrum: Machado's Emulation of Poe in «Father Against Mother».
About the author
Greicy Pinto Bellin is a professor in the Department of Literature at Centro Universitário Campos de Andrade (Uniandrade), Brazil. She has published a number of articles on the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Machado de Assis. Her most recent publication is an English translation of ten stories by Machado de Assis, Miss Dollar: Stories by Machado de Assis (2016, with Ana Lessa-Schmidt and Glenn Cheney).
Report
«In this provocative study, Greicy Pinto Bellin tackles the received perception of Machado de Assis, the greatest writer of nineteenth-century Brazil, as a docile albeit gifted follower of French literary tradition. Bellin reads Machado's critical readings and (re)writings of Baudelaire and Poe allegorically to bring out Machado's project of a Pan-American literary modernity and national identity, where Rio de Janeiro joins forces with Baltimore to counter French hegemony.» (Odile Cisneros, University of Alberta)
