Reading Rio de Janeiro : literature and society in the nineteenth century / Zephyr Frank.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Frank, Zephyr L., 1970- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Brazilian fiction--Brazil--Rio de Janeiro--19th century--History and criticism.

Brazilian fiction.

Literature and society--Brazil--Rio de Janeiro--History--19th century.

Literature and society.

History.

Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)--Social conditions--19th century.

Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).

Brazil--Rio de Janeiro.

Social conditions.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 229 pages : ǂb illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2015.

Summary:

Reading Rio de Janeiro blazes a new trail for understanding the cultural history of nineteenth-century Brazil. To bring the social fabric of Rio de Janeiro alive, Zephyr Frank flips the historian's usual interest in literature as a source of evidence and, instead, uses the historical context to understand literature and the culture in depicts. By focusing on the theme of social integration through the novels of José de Alencar, Machado de Assis, and Aluísio Azevedo, the author draws the reader's attention to the way characters are caught between conflicting moral imperatives as they encounter a mobile and increasingly capitalist urban society, so different from the slave-based city of the past. Some characters grow and triumph in this setting; others are defeated by it. Though literature infuses this social history of nineteenth-century Rio, it is replete with maps, graphs, non-fiction sources, and statistical data and analysis that are the historian's stock-in-trade. By connecting a literary understanding of the social problems with the quantitative data traditional historical methods provide, Frank creates a richer and deeper understanding of urban society in nineteenth-century Brazil. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction : the Brazilian Bildungsroman

Sonhos d'ouro

Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas

O coruja

Sentimental educations

Marriage and money

Problems of spatial practice.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780804757447

0804757445

OCLC:

915324002