| Joaquim Maria Machado De Assis |
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| 1839 births | |
| machado de assis, joaquim maria | |
| 1908 deaths | |
| afro-brazilians | |
| brazilian novelists | |
| brazilian poets | |
| brazilian short story writers | |
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| machado de assis | |
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Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis () . LIFE Son of Francisco José de Assis (a half-black housepainter, descendant of freed Slave s) and Maria Leopoldina Machado de Assis (a Portuguese washerwoman), Machado de Assis lost both his mother and his only sister at an early age. Machado is said to have learnt to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learnt to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio De Janeiro , where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel De Macedo . In 1869 Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novaes, a descendant of noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and stability that permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular Novel s which sold well, much in the late style of José De Alencar , but are not read much nowadays. His style changed in the 1880s , and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered (the first novel in his 'new style' was ''Epitaph for a Small Winner'', known by the new Gregory Rabassa translation as ''Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas'' -- a literal translation of the original title, ''Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas''). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom , and Eça De Queirós in Portugal , but Machado de Assis' work have a far bleaker emotional undertone. Assis' work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne 's '' Tristram Shandy ''. Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. This explains his numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and the overall likeness to Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the "short story", having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese languages, such as ''O Alienista'' and ''Missa do Galo''. Together with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy Of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908. POETRY Machado de Assis' first published works were poetry, but his output in this genre is not as well considered as his prose.
''DOM CASMURRO'' Machado de Assis was fascinated with the theme of Jealousy , and many of his novels are built on this intrigue. One of his most popular ones, ''Dom Casmurro'', is still widely read in Brazilian schools. The volume reflects Machado de Assis' life as a translator of Shakespeare, and also his influence from French Realism , especially Honoré De Balzac , Gustave Flaubert and Émile Zola . In the novel, he also refers to '' Much Ado About Nothing '', '' The Merry Wives Of Windsor '', '' Hamlet '', '' Romeo And Juliet '', and most importantly, '' Othello ''. Here, Machado de Assis shows a different version for the classical one of , has indeed cheated on him with his best friend, and whether the son she gave birth to is in fact the son of his best friend. The book never gives a direct answer to the questions, and the outcome is still one of the major ones among Brazilian literature fans and critics. The Brazilian writer Dalton Trevisan once noted that, if ''Dom Casmurro'' is not to be read as the story of Capitu betraying Bentinho, Machado de Assis would simply be José De Alencar . Another measure of the writer's literary achievement is given by the more profane conclusion that, were Capitu and Bento to go to court, neither would be able to win solely on the basis of details comprised in the novel. Some commentators of Machado de Assis' works: LIST OF WORKS
EXTERNAL LINKS ( PORTUGUESE )
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