Machado de Assis : Toward a Poetics of Emulation

This book offers an alternative explanation for one of the core dilemmas of Brazilian literary criticism: the "midlife crisis" Machado de Assis underwent from 1878 to 1880, the result of which was the writing of The Posthumous Memoirs of Br s Cubas , as well as the remarkable production of his mature years--with an emphasis on his masterpiece, Dom Casmurro . At the center of this alternative explanation, Castro Rocha situates the fallout from the success enjoyed by E a de Queir s with the publication of Cousin Bas lio and Machado's two long texts condemning the author and his work. Literary and aesthetic rivalries come to the fore, allowing for a new theoretical framework based on a literary appropriation of "thick description," the method proposed by anthropologist Clifford Geertz. From this method, Castro Rocha derives his key hypothesis: an unforeseen consequence of Machado's reaction to E a's novel was a return to the classical notion of aemulatio , which led Machado to develop a "poetics of emulation."