Hardback - £102.00

Publication date:

14 November 2013

Length of book:

248 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

237x157mm
6x9"

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 19th- and 20th-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 œuvreand 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.
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.