Description
- Abstract:
- The texts of the growing canon of ‘intérpretes do Brasil’ are frequently seen as offering firm interpretations of national development, promoting determinate categories of analysis, defending Brazil’s virtues, and implying specific corrections for the nation’s faults. Yet some notable works of the genre seem to reject the notions that interpreting the past may usefully inform the future and that the nation may be in any substantial way explained. This article shows how “interpretations” of Brazil as disparate as Machado de Assis’s ‘Esaú e Jacó’ and Euclides da Cunha’s ‘Os Sertões’ arrive at a skeptical suspension of judgment about the nature, condition, and future of the nation.
- Os textos do crescente cânone de intérpretes do Brasil são lidos frequentemente como oferecendo interpretações firmes do desenvolvimento national, promovendo categorias de análise fixas, defendendo as virtudes do Brasil e sugerindo correções específicas para as faltas da nação. No entanto, algumas obras notáveis do gênero parecem rejeitar as suposições de que interpretar o passado possa dar forma ao futuro e de que a nação possa ser explicada de maneira significativa. Este artigo mostra como “interpretações” do Brasil tão díspares quanto ‘Esaú e Jacó’ de Machado de Assis e ‘Os Sertões’ de Euclides da Cunha acabam na suspensão cética do juízo no tocante à natureza, condição e futuro da nação.
Citation
Mittelman, David,
"Machado de Assis and Euclides da Cunha, interpreters of an inexplicable nation"
(2020).
BRASIL/BRAZIL: A Journal of Brazilian Literature.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/49r0-q212
Relations
Is Part of:
Collection:
-
BRASIL/BRAZIL: A Journal of Brazilian Literature
...BRASIL/BRAZIL: A Journal of Brazilian Literature (ISSN: 2526-4885), founded in 1988, publishes scholarly articles on Brazilian literature and in Comparative Literature with a focus on Brazilian literature, as well as book reviews, interviews with writers, English-language translations of Brazilian literature …