Lima Barreto

New Critical Perspectives

Contributions by Earl E. Fitz, Renata R. M. Wasserman, Nelson H. Vieira, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Emanuelle K. F. Oliveira, Paulo da-Luz-Moreira, Vivaldo A. Santos, Robert Anderson, Luiz Fernando Valente, Mário Higa, Marc A. Hertzman, Talia Gúzman-González Edited by Lamonte Aidoo, Daniel F. Silva

Publication date:

14 November 2013

Length of book:

248 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739176122

This edited volume is a collection of twelve interdisciplinary essays from various Brazilian literary scholars, historians, and anthropologists analyzing the work of 19^th- and 20^th-century Afro-Brazilian writer Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto. This is the first collection to present a cohesive analysis of this writer’s work in English. It is an intellectually diverse collection of essays that recover Barreto’s œuvre and consider a wide range of topics, including Barreto’s treatment of race, family, class, social and gender politics of postabolition Brazil, neocolonialism, the disjuncture between urban and suburban spaces, and national identity politics.

Introduction
By Lamonte Aidoo and Daniel F. Silva
Chapter 1: Lima Barreto and Gender: An Inter-American Perspective
By Earl E. Fitz
Chapter 2: Race and Sex in Lima Barreto and Charles Chesnutt: a Comparative Politics Between Brazil and the United States
By Renata R. M. Wasserman
Chapter 3: The ‘Coloniality of Power’ and the Fictional Biography of an Obscure Bureaucrat in Lima Barreto’s Vida e Morte de M. J. Gonzaga de Sá
By Nelson H. Vieira
Chapter 4: Lima Barreto and the Mimetic Experience: Agency, Literature, and Madness in the Brazil of the First Republic
By Lilia Moritz Schwarcz
Chapter 5: A Pan-African Activist at the Turn of the 20^th Century: Lima Barreto and the Denunciation of Racial Prejudice in Brazil and the United States
By Emanuelle K. F. Oliveira
Chapter 6: Climbing the Social Ladder as a Tragic Farce in Brazil at the Turn of the Century in Machado de Assis’ “The Nurse,” Lima Barreto’s “The Man Who Spoke Javanese,” and Monteiro Lobato’s “The Funnyman Who Repented”
By Paulo da-Luz-Moreira
Chapter 7: Extraordinary Delusions: the Madness of Capital in Lima Barreto’s writings
By Vivaldo A. Santos
Chapter 8: “Fatally Condemned to Wander”: Lima Barreto’s Nonfiction Journalism and Testimonials
By Robert Anderson
Chapter 9: From Synthesis to Difference: Lima Barreto’s Parodic Ufanismo
By Luiz Fernando Valente
Chapter 10: Reading Lima Barreto against Lima Barreto
By Mário Higa
Chapter 11: Freyreans, Marxists, and the “Labyrinth of Nations”: Lima Barreto and His Critics
By Marc A. Hertzman
Chapter 12: Men in their Own Wor(l)ds: Lima Barreto and the Narration of Masculinity
By Talia Gúzman-González

Comprising 12 essays on Brazilian writer Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto (1881-1921), this volume opens with an introduction by Aidoo and Silva. In a translated essay on agency, literature, and madness, social anthropologist Lilia Moritz Schwarcz sets the parameters for understanding Lima Barreto's role as both leading author of his day and marginalized, bitter critic of poverty, race, social hierarchy, and politics. Other essays place Lima Barreto, who was troubled by alcoholism and mental illness, in a pan-American context through comparisons with North American literature (essays by Earl Fitz and Renata Wasserman); foreground him as a spokesman against endo-colonialist structures (Nelson Vieira, Vivaldo Santos, Emanuelle K. F. Oliveira); and question his dual position as educated critic and victim of racism (Marc Hertzman, Mário Higa). Luiz Fernando Valente studies Lima Barreto's famous parody of patriotism, and Paulo da-Luz-Moreira considers his humor in the story 'The Man Who Spoke Javanese' against farces by Machado de Assis and Monteiro Lobato. . . .Summing Up: Recommended.