MACHADO DE ASSIS AND HIS CARIOCA QUINTET

Abstract This essay addresses Machado de Assis's work in two ways: it presents a reflection on the overall challenges of positioning and classifying the ingenious writer who produced his work on the margins of countries held to be at the center of the world culture on the one hand and analyzes the writer's last five novels as an aesthetic unit centered around Dom Casmurro on the other. Both approaches converge on one question – how was it possible to achieve such complexity in a rising literature? – which Jorge de Sena seeks to answer.