O cosmopolitismo e a insensatez (1860-1882): a loucura como conformidade cultural no Rio de Janeiro de Machado de Assis.

Abstract

This dissertation discusses why and how Machado de Assis, in The Alienist , registers a certain cultural proximity among Carioca Imperial Court, French Court and the English one, between 1881 and 1882. For that, it was considered in our study that some narrative resources showed in this short story are developed into socio-cultural circumstances experienced by the author, between the 1860 s and 1880´s. Actually, it s in the process of his accommodation related to the job opportunities which are offered to him, in a condition of a chronicler and French and English translator, that the irony, the dialogal tone, the imaginary theater and the skepticism, are developed and elaborated by Machado de Assis in The Alienist . From this short story on, Machado de Assis addresses, as madness, the consumption without limit of hand-made products imported from France and England as well as the project of national identity, under influence of the relation between Rousseau s Romanticism and Positivism, of the Historical and Geographical Brazilian Institute (IHGB), and some political propositions made by intellectuals linked to Recife Faculty of Law, supported not only by Evolutionism and Social Darwinism, and from São Paulo Faculty of Law, but also by Positivism and Liberalism, as solution to promote the cultural progress of Brazil. Therefore, it s in the context of the second reign, characterized by a marked triumph of the cosmopolitism in the court, that Machado de Assis organizes characters to do ironies with this feature from a hidden methodology; learnt with Poe (1981), with an engaged posture under Hugo s influence (1982) and with a proposition of reflexion guided by Pirro s skeptical philosophy (2007). To sum up, to dramatize the life of the court from The Alienist , Machado de Assis seems to suggest that the supposed cause of Brazil s cultural backwardness, when compared to France and England, is not racial, but moral and political.