Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Machado de Assis and The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas online resources

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
Picture source


It took a while to find things online (in English) about Machado de Assis. While a few of these items are repetitive, I'll include the links I found interesting:

His Wikipedia entry

His entry at books and writers

A beautiful site created by the Academia Brasileira de Letras

Who was Machado de Assis? at Espelho: Revista Machadiana, a scholarly journal, published yearly and devoted to the Brazilian author Machado de Assis. Follow the links for a bibliography.

Reading Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, an article from the Dalkey Archive Press (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

The abstract for Susan Sontag's Afterlives: The Case for Machado de Assis. The essay is not available online (but can be found in one of her collections of essays).

A few notes on his epilepsy

The Representation of Brazil and the Politics of Nation in American Literature--a good introduction on how Brazil is portrayed in American lit

Academic Research Resources on Brazil, courtesy of the University of Texas at Austin
A brief survey of the short story part 47: Machado de Assis at The Guardian

There were several articles recently commemorating the 100th anniversary of his death:


I could not find too much on The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (sometimes translated using the subtitle Epitaph for a Small Winner) outside of the general articles listed above. But here are a few items:

The Wikipedia entry on the book.

His works can be found on line (book form and audio) if you're familiar with Portuguese. I have yet to find any online translations in English. I am reading the Library of Latin America version, translated by Gregory Rabassa. A preview of it can be found at Google Book Search.

Website for the movie Memórias Póstumas. (If anyone knows where an inexpensive DVD copy can be obtained--other than the Brown University library--please let me know)




Picture source

2 comments:

William Michaelian said...

Looks like another good adventure, and a natural follow-up after Tristram Shandy. Thanks for the great links. And the Google Books result offers a tempting sample. I’ll be following with interest. . . .

Dwight said...

I had this lined up for a while and. when I read a little about it, everyone talked about how big an influence Tristram Shandy was. Since I wasn't that familiar with it, I figured I better go with Sterne first.

The Library of Latin America books are prohibitively expensive, but I got a used copy for one third of the list at Powell's. I only discovered the Google Books link yesterday (of course).

I have several major deadlines at work this week so we'll see how soon I can get started on this...after reading most of the links, I'm looking forward to it!