Machado de Assis : a literary life / K. David Jackson.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The literary world of Machado de Assis -- The wizard of Cosme Velho -- The formative period -- Novels of the 1870s -- The literary modernism of Machado de Assis -- Reading Machado de Assis. Machado's pendulum -- Breaking the frame: the rhetoric of substitution -- Machado's world library -- Time's invisible fabric: telling what cannot be said, saying what cannot be told -- Three exemplary modes. Theater and opera: Machado's operatic theater of the world -- Delirium, hallucination, and dream: flying through time on a delirious trapeze -- Humanitas and satire: Machado's mad philosopher -- The actor-authors -- Bras Cubas, Basso Buffo -- Bento Santiago's grand dissimulation -- The love-death theme of Counselor Ayres -- Conclusion.