Abstract
After carrying out a rereading of Machado de Assis’s article "News from Current Brazilian Literature. Instinct of Nationality", which engaged in the notions of a national literature and literary world, we will discuss the respective regimes of functioning and mutual determinations of these concepts according to the point of view and historical context of the author. We will notice that the difficulties related to the (peripheral) position of Brazilian literature and the specific questions the author has to solve in that space are included in his perception of the literary world of his time, namely his necessity of claiming a constitutive bond between his language (more precisely, certain specific manners of speaking about the language) and a literary capital of a given geographical region which is still impoverished and requires embodiment.
Machado de Assis; Brazilian literature; national literature; literary world; Abel Barros Baptista