Machado de Assis: Complete Fiction Prose

Iracema

Dating back to 1865, the novel is an icon of Indianism  and one of the best known creations of our literature. The work  brings the love story between the Indian Iracema and the adventurer Martim, attributing to him the character of a founding legend of the national character.   In it, as is recurrent in romantic nationalism, the author chooses tropical nature, the pre-colonial past and the process of miscegenation involving the Indian and the Portuguese colonizer as formative elements_cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b -136bad5cf58d_do the spirit of the Brazilian people. Here available for download, a 2017 publication by Edições Câmara.

File source: http://bd.camara.gov.br/bd/handle/bdcamara/11854.

(Illustration: "Iracema", oil on canvas by José Maria de Medeiros, 1881.)

The Guarani

A obra, publicada em 1857, é situada na primeira metade do século XVII e traz a narrativa do amor platônico of the Indian Peri by the noblewoman Ceci, having, as a backdrop, historical facts from the time of Portuguese colonization. The novel became an emblem of Indianist nationalism and was given an operatic version in 1870 by the Brazilian composer Carlos Gomes.

File source: www.bibvirt future usp br.

(Illustration: "Indio tupi do Brasil" (edited). The original engraving can be found in frontispiece of the bookExplorations of the highlands of the Brazil, vol. 1.  London: Tinsley Brothers, 1869. Source:_cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf59d_br.pinterest.com/eamil/antigoil291)

Luciola

The work, published in 1862, was the first in the series “profiles of women”,  which also includes the novelsDiva, from 1864, andMadam, from 1875. The three are presented by the fictional lady GM, author or hypothetical editor of the narratives, which deal with romantic heroines transformed by the power of love, with the stories  located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, in the time of the Second Reign. Lucíola is narrated in the first person, from the perspective of the character Paulo, the protagonist's lover, who reports, in letters sent to GM, the setbacks of his relationship with the famous courtesan, which occurred years before the narrated facts were written. The work, which, like the others in the series, follows the formula of the French serial, maintains correspondence with the renownedThe Lady of the Camellias(1848), a novel by Alexandre Dumas (son), which became a great success with the public in different parts of the world, including Brazil.

File source: www.dominiopublico.com.br.

(Illustration: portrait  by Marie Duplessis (edited),  by Édouard Viénot. Famous French courtesan of the Romantic era, Marie Duplessis_cc781905-5cde-3193-bbin5bbin6aspiro do romance The Lady of the Camellias e de La traviata, Verdi's operatic version of the French serial. Source of the original copy:https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Marie_Duplessis) 

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Diva

The novel (1864)  idealizes the sentimental education of a nineteenth-century Brazilian lady, abounding in scenes of bourgeois life in the capital_cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b-596bad5ccdoEmpire_ -5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_with its salons and other family environments, frequented by marriageable girls from the high social circles of the time. The protagonist, Emília Duarte, is one of these ladies, and the narrative focuses on the process of transformation of the rebellious girl into a woman, through the paths of romantic love. Download and read the 2017 edition of Iba Mendes Livros Digitais.

File source: www.projetolivrolivre.com.

(Illustration: Ladies in a Ballroom of American High Society. The original engraving is found at  Frank Leslie's Ladies Magazine Catalog, de 1870. File source: http://www.dezenovevinte.net/arte%20decorativa/jm_moda.htm🇧🇷

Madam

Publicado em 1875, esse romance se destaca como uma obra da maturidade literária do author. The narrative recounts the process of the sentimental education of Aurélia Camargo, an emerging lady, inserted in the high society of the Second Empire, and has as its main themes marriage as a way of social ascension and the victory of selfless love over materialistic interests. Não obstante conformado à fórmula do folhetim romântico, à qual se adéqua a evolução do drama amoroso, vivenciado por Fernando_cc781905 -5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_Seixas and Aurelia, it is observed, inMadam, a reflection realistic reflection of life in different  strata of society, their living spaces  and the social gears of the time.

(Illustration: edited portrait of Maria Romana Bernardes da Rocha, the Marquise of Itamarati. The painting was painted during the Second Empire by François Claudius Compte-Calix. 3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_http://www.dezenovevinte.net/arte%20decorativa/jm_moda.htm🇧🇷

The Silver Mines

Fully published in six volumes between 1865 and 1866, this novel evokes the early days of colonial Brazil.  EmThe Silver Mines, as can also be seen in The Guarani  and at Iracema, Alencar makes use of the resources typical of the adventure novel, incorporating elements of the myth of origin into the narrative, this time to represent the demand  for precious metals in colonial Brazil, thus searching for "Potosi" Brazilian ou  the tropical "Eldorado". This is the motto chosen by Alencar to insert our colonial history, in the order of ideals supranationals in vogue in the Romantic period. The historical novel, modality in which the work is situated, was consolidated in the beginning of the 19th century, its origin being linked to the development of historiography as a discipline, and had as one of its most prominent representatives, the Scottish writer Walter Scott, read and much appreciated by Alencar.  The common thread of the novel is the search for a route to the silver mines, supposedly discovered by the adventurer Robério Dias, an episode to which the author refers inThe Guarani🇧🇷 Here you find para download  the complete novel in a 2014 edition, published by Iba Mendes.

File source: www.projetolivrolivre.com.

(Illustration: "Withdrawal from Cabo de São Roque", oil on canvas by Henrique Bernardelli, 1927).

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the Sertanejo

Published in 1875, the same year as the release of the urban novelMadam🇧🇷the sertanejofalls within the “sertanista” strand, contemporary called regionalism. This current gained strength in Brazil in the 1870s, when positivist criticism, then on the rise, already questioned the prominence of the Indian as an element that formed the national character, and the Indianist motto, glossed by our first romantics to demarcate, was exhausted. the origin and the historical particularities of the Brazilian nation. Appearing about five years after the publication of Alencar's first sertanista novel (The Gaucho, 1870) and three years afterInnocence(1872), by the Viscount of Taunay, the work introduces the city reader of the time to the rustic life in the Cariris of Ceará. Unlike Taunay, Alencar endows the sertanejo with positive features, presenting the caboclo, the result of miscegenation between the Portuguese colono and the Indian, as a symbol of strength, courage, sense of freedom, insight and purity of character. In this novel, in which seriousness is tempered with a discreet dose of humour, the tragic spirit gives way to drama, keeping the fate of Arnaldo, the enigmatic countryman, and of the sacred and unlikely love that is born between him and Flor, the virginal daughter of the powerful captain-major.

File source: www.ebooksbrasil.org.

(Ilustração:  "A  sertanejo", editada. A gravura original se encontra no livro_cc781905- 5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_Travels in Brazil, de Henry Koster, 1816, p. 87.)