Two Girls: And Other Essays
Roberto Schwarz is the foremost literary critic of his generation in Brazil and the most important Marxist practitioner in the tradition of the Frankfurt School writing anywhere today. This collection confirms the international significance of Schwarz’s critical achievement.

Studies of Kafka and Brecht respectively open and close the volume, which includes incisive studies of contemporary poetry and fiction in Brazil. The centerpiece is the hitherto untranslated Two Girls, which brings together two strongly contrasting narratives of girls’ lives—one a classic novel, the other an adolescent’s diary—to substantiate the crucial concept of objective form. With key reflections on theory and method and an illuminating account of the general historical importance of his exemplary Brazilian novelist, Machado de Assis, Two Girls compellingly demonstrates the logic and significance of Schwarz’s work for an English-language readership.
1113898417
Two Girls: And Other Essays
Roberto Schwarz is the foremost literary critic of his generation in Brazil and the most important Marxist practitioner in the tradition of the Frankfurt School writing anywhere today. This collection confirms the international significance of Schwarz’s critical achievement.

Studies of Kafka and Brecht respectively open and close the volume, which includes incisive studies of contemporary poetry and fiction in Brazil. The centerpiece is the hitherto untranslated Two Girls, which brings together two strongly contrasting narratives of girls’ lives—one a classic novel, the other an adolescent’s diary—to substantiate the crucial concept of objective form. With key reflections on theory and method and an illuminating account of the general historical importance of his exemplary Brazilian novelist, Machado de Assis, Two Girls compellingly demonstrates the logic and significance of Schwarz’s work for an English-language readership.
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Overview

Roberto Schwarz is the foremost literary critic of his generation in Brazil and the most important Marxist practitioner in the tradition of the Frankfurt School writing anywhere today. This collection confirms the international significance of Schwarz’s critical achievement.

Studies of Kafka and Brecht respectively open and close the volume, which includes incisive studies of contemporary poetry and fiction in Brazil. The centerpiece is the hitherto untranslated Two Girls, which brings together two strongly contrasting narratives of girls’ lives—one a classic novel, the other an adolescent’s diary—to substantiate the crucial concept of objective form. With key reflections on theory and method and an illuminating account of the general historical importance of his exemplary Brazilian novelist, Machado de Assis, Two Girls compellingly demonstrates the logic and significance of Schwarz’s work for an English-language readership.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781844679652
Publisher: Verso Books
Publication date: 01/16/2013
Pages: 288
Product dimensions: 5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Roberto Schwarz, born in Vienna in 1938, grew up in São Paulo, studying there and later in the United States and France. His books in English include Two Girls, Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture and A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism, the central component of his study of Machado.

Francis Mulhern is Associate Editor of New Left Review. His books include The Moment of “Scrutiny”, Culture/Metaculture and the edited collection Lives on the Left: Interviews with New Left Review.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction Francis Mulhern ix

I

1 Kafka's Family Man 3

2 Objective Form: Reflections on the Dialectic of Roguery 10

3 Beyond Universalism and Localism: Machado's Breakthrough 33

II Two Girls

4 Capitu, the Bride of Dom Casmurro 57

5 Another Capitu? Helena Morley's Diary 92

III

6 An Enormous Minimalism 191

7 City of God 223

8 Brecht's Relevance-Highs and Lows 235

Index 261

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