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Machado de Assis is among the most original creative minds in Brazil's rich four-century-long literary tradition. Caldwell's critical and biographical study explores Machado's purpose meaning and artistic method in each of his nine novels published between 1872 and 1908. She traces the ideas and recurrent themes and identifies his affinities with other authors. In tracing Machado's experimentation with narrative techniques Caldwell reveals the increasingly subtle use he made of point of view sometimes indirect or reflected sometimes multiple and "nested" like Chinese boxes. Caldwell shows the increasing sureness with which he individualized his characters and how in advance of his time he developed action not by realistic detail but by the boldest use of allusion and symbol. Each novel is shown to be an artistic venture and not in any sense a regurgitation from a sick soul as some critics have argued. IN searching out the unity of his novels Caldwell explores the other aspects of Machado's intellectual life--as poet,journalist playwright conversationalist and academician. Of particular interest is her attention to his shift away from the social criticism of his early novels into the labyrinth of individual psychology in the last five--all of which rank among the world literature. But this perceptive account never loses sight of the one element present in every piece of Machado's fiction in eery one of his personages; that is superlative comedy in its whole range: wit irony satire parody burlesque humor. Altogether Caldwell reveals to us a writer in essence a poet who is still the altus prosator of Brazilian letters. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice reach and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893 Voices Revived makes high-quality peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1970.