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Machado de Assis |
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was a Brazilian writer, considered the greatest name of national literature. He wrote in almost all literary genres, being a poet, novelist, columnist, playwrighter, short story writer, serial writer, journalist, and literary critic. He witnessed the political change in the country when the Republic replaced the Empire and was a great reporter on political and social events of his time.
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Memórias Póstumas
de Brás Cubas com
dedicatória do autor |
Born in Rio de Janeiro, in a poor family, studied little in public school and never attended college. Machado de Assis was interested in the bohemian and the court, and fought to rise socially filling up himself of intellectual superiority. For this, he held various public offices, through the Ministry of Agriculture, Commerce and Public Works, and getting early notoriety in newspapers which published his poetry and first chronicles. Then, with close colleagues, he founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
His work consists of nine novels and plays, two hundred short stories, five collections of poems and sonnets, and more than six hundred chronic. Machado de Assis is considered the introducer of Realism in Brazil, with the publication of "Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas" (1881). Other following productions were "Quincas Borba", "Dom Casmurro", "Esaú and Jacó" and "Memorial de Aires".
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Caroline Augusta |
His work was of fundamental importance for Brazilian literary schools of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and arise nowadays as a great academic and public interest. Today, for innovation and boldness in early issues, he is seen as the only Brazilian writer, and recently, his name and his work has achieved several critics, scholars and fans worldwide. Machado de Assis is considered one of the greatest geniuses in the history of literature, along with authors such as Dante, Shakespeare and Camões.
Already widower of his wife Caroline Augusta and without children, Machado de Assis died at age 69 of generalized arteriosclerosis at his residence.
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de pé: Rodolfo Amoedo, Artur Azevedo, Inglês de Sousa, Bilac,Veríssimo, Bandeira, Filinto de Almeida, Passos, Magalhães, Bernardelli, Rodrigo Octavio, Peixoto; sentados: João Ribeiro, Machado, Lúcio de Mendonça e Silva Ramos. |