MACHADO DE ASSIS AND THE PHONOGRAPHIC ECHO

Authors

  • Marília Librandi-Rocha Stanford University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14195/2183-847X_6_12

Keywords:

Machado de Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, phonograph, sound studies and literature

Abstract

This essay analyzes the overlap between death and birth in the structure of Machado de Assis’s novel, and asks what is the relationship between listening and death in the inaugural form of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas? What is the relationship between the writing of death (“posthumous memories”) and listening to life, or between the writing of life (autobiography) and listening to death, that makes the aesthetic revolution of The Posthumous Memoirs? To answer this question, this essay establishes an analogy between the simultaneous emergence of this novel in 1880/1881, and the appearance of the new media in the same decade, especially the one that, since its announcement, is closest to death – the phonograph, patented by Thomas Edison in 1877. From this historical coincidence, this text asks: is it possible to read The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas as a “phonographic novel”?

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REL_Capa_Volume 6 (2016)

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Published

2016-03-20

Issue

Vol. 6 (2016): Eça and Machado: Transatlantic Dialogues

Section

Secção Temática

License

Copyright (c) 2016 Marília Librandi-Rocha

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows sharing the work with recognition of authorship and initial publication in Antropologia Portuguesa journal.