Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas

This is a critical edition of a modern classic (1st ed., 1880) by a Brazilian novelist whose works alone have stimulated many a reader to learn Portuguese. It is the achievement of the Machado de Assis Commission, a group of more than a dozen eminent scholars, who have enjoyed the support of the country’s highest level cultural agencies. Maintaining sound and advanced principles of textual criticism, the coauthors have never allowed their apparatus (bio-bibliography, philological introduction, annotation of variants) to obscure the clean lines of the critical text, which, though modernized, leaves intact the complexities and contradictions reflecting the linguistic ambient in which Machado wrote. To a degree, the efforts of the Commission bespeak the maturity of Brazilian civilization as a whole, which not only can produce a Machado de Assis but also can honor him so fittingly through editions of his works such as this which provide an indispensable basis for all further studies, whether stylistic, aesthetic, sociological, or historical, of his great artistic contribution.