Interpretations
Published 2017-03-16
Copyright (c) 2017 Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies
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Abstract
Abstract: The reader, a constant and central figure in Machado de Assis’ writings, undergoes several transformations throughout Machado’s work from the end of the 1850s to 1908. This article draws parallels between these transformations of the fictional reader in his work and the changes in the writer’s expectations of his empirical readership, in a country that in the 1870s had to face both its high level of illiteracy and a widespread resistance to books.