Zephyr L. Frank. Reading Rio de Janeiro

Selecting Brazilian writers José de Alencar (1829–1877), Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908), and Aluísio Azevedo (1857–1913), along with their novels Sonhos d’ouro (Golden Wildflowers), Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas (The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas), and O Coruja (The Owl), in this stimulating study historian Zephyr L. Frank dissects the bildungsroman or “coming-of-age novel” during the second half of the nineteenth century. The first half of Reading Rio de Janeiro: Literature and Society in the Nineteenth Century is given over to a detailed literary analysis of the novels. Frank provides essential information in regard to context, plot, and characters. At the same time, the evolving perspectives of Alencar, Machado de Assis, and Azevedo are carefully drawn. This is then followed by a thematic and urban geographic analysis in the later chapters. In considering these literary classics, Frank aims to “[lay] bare the social structures that condition and inhibit the formation of independent bourgeois subjects” (91).

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