Bons dias!: escravidão e abolição na crônica machadiana

Abstract

This research aims at analyzing Machado de Assis's position concerning the slavery thematic in 1800 in Brazil. Our intention is to understand how the context of transition from Monarchy to Republic, from the slaves work to the free work (slavery abolition) and the deterministic and positivist ideas (the scientific racism) could have influenced the machadian literature in terms of form, style and choice of a theme. In order to do so, the idea of this study is to identify in the characters position in the chronicle sequence, 'Bons dias!' (1888-1889), the authors political point of view, as an intellectual and a citizen that assumes and defends the abolition cause and that criticizes, in an indirect way, the ethnic-racial discrimination.