Entre o antigo e o novo, o próprio e o alheio: o crítico Machado de Assis e os problemas literários de seu tempo

Abstract

As a participant of the great cultural debates of his time, Machado de Assis advocates that a countrys literary autonomy will only be possible through the work of authors who regard literature as art, as transfiguration, not as a plain reproduction of reality. Based on this idea and considering the emerging national canon, Machado analyzes the literary mass, activating his authors and readers education project via a body of works that range from the Arcadian writers to the poets aligned with Realism. Reflection, invention, analysis, study, balance, conciliation between past and present, national and foreign are his criticisms main topics, more prominently present on his poetry, where both poet and critic stand out. This is the analysis the present study aims at, not exhaustingly, focusing on essays such as O passado, o presente e o futuro da literatura (1858), "O ideal do crítico" (1865), Notícia da atual literatura brasileira: instinto de nacionalidade (1873), A nova geração (1879), Machados studies on poets, along with his own poetry books, namely Crisálidas (1864), Falenas (1872), Americanas (1875) and Ocidentais (1900).