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DOM CASMURRO'S CRITICAL LEGACY IN ENGLISH: STATE OF THE ART

FORTUNA CRÍTICA DE DOM CASMURRO EM INGLÊS: ESTADO DA ARTE

Abstract

Dom Casmurro, long canonized in Brazil, conquered a discreet, but solid place in the anglophone community, with dozens of articles, book chapters, and dissertations focused exclusively on it. It also enjoys a significant presence in journalistic criticism and even in pop culture. This study, the result of ten years of systematic literature survey as a means of organizing an annotated bibliography, gathers a relevant part from the critical legacy of the Brazilian novel by Machado de Assis in the English-speaking world, highlighting the impressive variety of approaches, which range from stylistic to postcolonial considerations, from relations to other titles of the Western canon to interpretations about the characters and their social milieu.

Keywords:
Dom Casmurro; criticism; English language

Resumo

Dom Casmurro, cânone consolidado no Brasil, conquistou um lugar sólido, ainda que discreto, na comunidade anglófona, sendo assunto de dezenas de artigos, teses e capítulos de livro focados exclusivamente nele. Há, ainda, uma presença significativa desse romance na crítica jornalística e até na esfera pop. Este estudo, fruto de dez anos de revisão de literatura sistemática com o intuito de organizar uma bibliografia anotada, reúne uma parte relevante da fortuna crítica do romance brasileiro de Machado de Assis em língua inglesa, de modo a destacar a variedade de abordagens, que vão de estudos estilísticos a considerações de cunho pós-colonial, das relações com outros representantes do cânone ocidental às interpretações de personagens e de seu meio social.

Palavras-chave:
Dom Casmurro; crítica; língua inglesa

An indisputable exponent of the Brazilian literary canon, the novel Dom Casmurro (1899) has also established itself as a Latin American classic in the English-speaking sphere, albeit with discretion. This study seeks to gather critical interventions relevant to the history of this important work by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908) in the anglophone world. It presents an overview of academic criticism in the English language by mapping representative studies and commentaries published mostly in the United States and in the United Kingdom, from mid-twentieth century to present times. The results suggest the main trends of Machadian criticism in English in circulation today.

Dom Casmurro seems to illustrate Italo Calvino's assertion regarding the inexhaustible quality of classics (CALVINO, 2009CALVINO, Italo. Why Read the Classics? New York: Penguin Modern Classics, 2009.). Covering all the criticism published in Brazil would be an inglorious task to say the least. As Marta Peixoto (2005PEIXOTO, Marta. Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis. In: KRISTAL, Efraín (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. p. 219-231.) observed, it is quite possibly the largest critical legacy of a novel in Brazilian fiction. The sum of studies in English does not come close to this magnitude, but it is vaster than one might assume at first.

The effort to gather sources about Dom Casmurro in English began a decade ago, with the important support of selected bibliographies published by Machadian scholars (BAGBY Jr., 1975BAGBY Jr., Alberto I. Eighteen Years of Machado de Assis: A Critical Annotated Bibliography for 1956-74. Hispania, v. 58, p. 648-683, 1975.; PATAI, 1999PATAI, Daphne. Machado in English. In: GRAHAM, Richard (Ed.). Machado de Assis: Reflections on a Brazilian Master Writer. Austin: University of Texas Press , 1999. p. 85-116.; HATJE-FAGGION, 2001HATJE-FAGGION, Válmi. The Translator's Discursive Presence in Translated Discourse: Machado de Assis' Five Novels in English Multiple Translations. 2001. 303 f. Tese (Ph.D. em Estudos da Tradução) - Centre for British and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry (UK), 2001.; JACKSON, 2006JACKSON, K. David. Machado de Assis in English: a selected biography. In: ROCHA, João Cezar de Castro (Ed.). The Author as Plagiarist: The Case of Machado de Assis. Dartmouth, MA: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 2006. p. 627-646.; FITZ, 2009______. The Reception of Machado de Assis in the United Stated during the 1950s and 1960s. Luso-Brazilian Review, Madison, v. 46, n. 1, p. 16-35, 2009.; FREITAS, 2012FREITAS, Luana Ferreira de. Dom Casmurro em inglês: tradução, visibilidade e crítica. In: ______; GUERINI, Andréia; COSTA, Walter Carlos (Orgs.). Machado de Assis tradutor e traduzido. Tubarão: Copiart, 2012. p. 75-86.; FREITAS & COSTA, 2015______; COSTA, Cynthia Beatrice. Machado contista em antologias de língua inglesa. Cadernos de Tradução, v. 35, n. 1, p. 69-85, 2015.). As for the methodology, the author has followed the guidelines for literature survey and annotated bibliography: a systematic literature review has been undertaken; references were collected and described after being found in academic databases, digital libraries, university repositories, and bookstores.1 1 Among the main databases surveyed are the physical and digital collection of the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, in Rio de Janeiro; the collection of the New York Public Library; the libraries of the University of São Paulo, Yale University, and Harvard University; the academic databases JSTOR and ProQuest Historical News & Newspapers, the latter to search for mentions in journalistic sources. As commercial research sources, Amazon and AbeBooks were systematically searched. In the search spaces of all these sources, the search terms adopted were "dom+casmurro", "machado+de+assis+dom+casmurro", and "machado+de+assis+novels" (this is based on the notion of "words co-occurrence" (see MORESI; PINHO, 2021). Brief mentions of Dom Casmurro without any further comment were not considered. Mentions that involve at least some descriptive or critical comment were considered significant and included in the survey. This descriptive survey covers literature from 1953, when Dom Casmurro was first published in English, to 2022. It adopts co-word analysis (MORESI; PINHO, 2021MORESI, Eduardo Amadeu Dutra Moresi; PINHO, Isabel. Proposta de abordagem para refinamento de pesquisa bibliográfica. New Trends in Qualitative Research , v. 9, p. 11-20, 2021.) and a quantitative approach (see BRYMAN, 2006BRYMAN, Alan. Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Research: How is It Done? Qualitative Research, v. 6, n. 1, p. 97-113, 2006.; CRESWELL, 2007CRESWELL, John W. Projeto de pesquisa. Porto Alegre: Artmed, 2007.) by gathering sources found in a specific time interval as a means of indicating production peaks and/or events triggering a more intense critical production. As an annotated bibliography, it also has a qualitative aspect, as it undertakes both a cross-sectional thematic analysis, approaching different sources by finding similarities between them, and an individual analysis of the enunciation of each text, seeking to understand each critical approach in its individuality. Sources found are chronologically organized - as they are presented here - and interpreted in order to separate them in groups and thus point to critical phenomena tendencies (these are gathered and presented in the "Brief discussion and final remarks" section). The main objective of the study is to observe innovations and changes in critical standards, as well as to keep the circulation of the novel in the English-speaking sphere under constant scrutiny.

In the case of Dom Casmurro, the interference of foreign critics has been playing a relevant role in its critical history, as we see in the much-cited case of Helen Caldwell, the American scholar who revolutionized the reading of the novel. Caldwell questioned the collective assumption that this was yet another book on female adultery (GUIMARÃES, 2019GUIMARÃES, Hélio de Seixas. Helen Caldwell, Cecil Hemley e os julgamentos de Dom Casmurro. Machado de Assis em Linha - Revista Eletrônica de Estudos Machadianos , v. 12, n. 27, p. 113-141, 2019. ), a cliché of 19th century psychological realism. Instead of believing in the unreliable narrator's certainty about his wife's deception, as Brazilians seemed to do at the time (cf. MIGUEL-PEREIRA, 1936MIGUEL-PEREIRA, Lucia. Machado de Assis (estudo crítico e biográfico). São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1936.; MACHADO, 1953MACHADO, José Bettencourt. Machado of Brazil: The Life and Times of Machado de Assis, Brazil's Greatest Novelist. New York: Bramerica, 1953.), Caldwell presented a case against Bento Santiago by emphasizing the novel's intertextual link with Shakespeare's Othello.

As it is well-known, in Dom Casmurro Bento Santiago is the sole narrator of the rise and fall of his love for Capitu, the poorer neighbor he marries and probably the most celebrated female character in Brazilian literature. While Capitu's (in)fidelity still inhabits popular imagination, studies from various domains are proof that the novel has an impressive capacity to reinvent itself according to when, where and by whom it is read.

I. 20th century: introduction and ascension

Dom Casmurro was translated into English by Caldwell (1953), Robert L. Scott-Buccleuch (1991), and John Gledson (1997). It enjoys thus the advantage of having been translated by two of its most important critics, Caldwell and Gledson. A fourth translation by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson has just been published by Liveright in May 2023.2 2 The translations of the novel and their paratexts have already been explored at length (see COSTA, 2016). The present study excludes digital editions, since they are often presented without any reliable information about authorship, translation and editing process, or place of origin. Currently, there are at least five editions of Dom Casmurro in English on Amazon with insufficient data. Brazilian bilingual edition by São Paulo-based publisher Landmark (ASSIS, 2020), with Sávio Ramos Silva's translation, is not considered in the present survey as it circulates in the Brazilian market only.

As already mentioned, Caldwell's devotion to Machado's literary talent and her effort to disseminate it constitute a fundamental divide in the writer's history. Long before Caldwell's interference, however, others had mentioned Dom Casmurro in passage or in academic works that are now difficult to access, such as theses and dissertations. An exception is Isaac Goldberg's Brazilian Literature, published in 1922, in which he cited an excerpt to demonstrate that Machado's method consists in "giving short feet to long ideas" (GOLDBERG, 2015GOLDBERG, Isaac. Brazilian Literature. New York: Pendle Hill Classics, 2015., p. 115). Also, more than two decades later, Samuel Putnam (1948PUTNAM, Samuel. Marvelous Journey: Four Centuries of Brazilian Literature. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948.) elected Dom Casmurro as Machado's masterpiece.

The decisive turn came however in 1953, when Caldwell's Dom Casmurro became the second novel by Machado to be released in the United States and in England, after William L. Grossman's translation of Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas. Overall, the book was well received by the press, which covered it as a novelty - at least two dozen American and British newspapers commented on the publication (see COSTA, 2016COSTA, Cynthia Beatrice. Dom Casmurro em inglês: tradução e recepção de um clássico brasileiro. 2016. 392 f. Tese (Doutorado em Estudos da Tradução) - Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Tradução, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, 2016.). In The Washington Post, Mary Jane Hopkins (1953HOPKINS, Mary Jane. Brazilian Master Overdue Here. The Washington Post, p. B6, 10 May 1953.) questioned the delay for the novel to appear in English and favored Machado in a comparison to anglophone foremost writers, such as Thomas Hardy and Henry James. The same enthusiasm can be perceived in Harvey Curtis Webster's commentary in The New York Times: "The extraordinary virtue and charm of the novel is the consequence of de Assis' skillful blending of his own original insight and sensibility with the technique he learned from Sterne" (WEBSTER, 1953WEBSTER, Harvey Curtis. The Essential Ambiguities in Us All. The New York Times, p. BR24, 24 May 1953., p. BR24). There were unreceptive reviews as well, all somewhat condescending in tone, judging Dom Casmurro monotonous and/or pretentious (CHARQUES, 1953CHARQUES, R. D. New Novels. The Spectator, p. 26, 12 Jun. 1953.; TYLDEN-WRIGHT, 1953TYLDEN-WRIGHT, David. Dom Casmurro. Times Literary Supplement, p. 133, 12 Apr. 1953.). In The Observer, famous journalist Marghanita Laski called the novel "amateurish" (LASKI, 1953LASKI, Marghanita. The Year's Novels. The Observer, p. 7, 20 Dec. 1953., p. 7).

The Brazilian Othello of Machado de Assis, Caldwell's (1960CALDWELL, Helen. The Brazilian Othello of Machado De Assis. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press , 1960. ) pathbreaking study, was then released in 1960, and soon enough English-speaking scholars started showing signs of its impact. Keith Ellis (1962ELLIS, Keith. Technique and Ambiguity in Dom Casmurro. Hispania , v. 45, n. 3, p. 436-440, 1962.) argued that Capitu's possible guilt increases the imaginative participation of the reader. Ellis (1971______. Ambiguity and Point of View in Some Novelistic Representations of Jealousy. MLN, v. 86, n. 6, p. 891-909, 1971.) would later return to Dom Casmurro to compare it with Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata. Demetrius Basdekis (1964BASDEKIS, Demetrius. Dualism in Notes from Underground and Dom Casmurro. Revista de Letras, Assis, v. 5, p. 117-124, 1964.) traced affinities between Machado and another Russian, Dostoyevsky. At the release of the second edition of Caldwell's translation of Dom Casmurro, a statement by poet, translator and scholar Dudley Fitts was used to promote the book: "I do not see how a man who has thoughtfully read Dom Casmurro can ever be quite the same as he was before" (ASSIS, 1966ASSIS, Machado de. Dom Casmurro. Translated and with an introduction by Helen Caldwell. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1966.).

From the late 1960s onwards, scholars from various American colleges and universities divulged their views on the novel, either to relate it to other well-known Western literary works, or to contribute to interpretative studies. Henryk Zyomek (1968) drew parallels between Dom Casmurro and Don Quixote. Charles Param (1970PARAM, Charles. Jealousy in the Novels of Machado de Assis. Hispania , v. 53, n. 2, p. 198-206, 1970.) elected Dom Casmurro as the pinnacle of the jealousy motif in Machado's body of work. That same year, Caldwell (1970_____. Machado de Assis: The Brazilian Master and His Novels. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.) returned to Machadian criticism with Machado de Assis: The Brazilian Master and His Novels, an informative literary-biographical essay. She named Dom Casmurro as the culmination of Machado's six previous novels and the greatest vehicle of expression of his art.

In the next decade, Alfred J. Mac Adam (1972/1973MAC ADAM, Alfred. Machado de Assis: An Introduction to Latin American Satire. Revista Hispánica Moderna, a. 37, n. 3, p. 180-187, 1972/1973.), from Columbia University, classified Machado as a satirist. Maria Luisa Nunes (1975NUNES, Maria Luisa. Machado de Assis’ Theory of the Novel. Latin American Literary Review, v. 4, n. 7, p. 57-66, 1975.; 1978______. Story Tellers and Characters: Point of View in Machado De Assis' Last Five Novels. Latin American Literary Review, v. 7, n. 13, p. 52-63, 1978.), then a professor at Yale University, examined Machado's experimentative audacities, such as the peculiar use of unreliable narrators. Years later, Nunes would argue that it is not the plot that matters the most in Dom Casmurro: "This is the story that Casmurro tells, but the way it is told makes it much richer and more complex" (NUNES, 1983______. The Craft of an Absolute Winner: Characterization and Narratology in the Novels of Machado de Assis. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1983., p. 56).

Doris J. Turner (1976TURNER, Doris J. A Clarification of some Strange Chapters in Machado's Dom Casmurro. Luso-Brazilian Review , v. 13, n. 1, p. 55-66, 1976.), from the University of Indiana, drew attention to Dom Casmurro's "strange chapters", while Sharon Smart Kellum transformed her master's thesis into the book The Art of Self-incrimination: Studies in Unreliable Narration, in which she approaches Casmurro as a selfish narrator. The following year, in "Dom Casmurro and the Opera Aperta", John P. Dwyer (1977DWYER, John P. Dom Casmurro and the Opera Aperta. INTI, n. 5-6, p. 157-162, 1977.) argued that this "nearly perfect novel" is self-admittedly open for interpretation, which is suggested by the narrator himself when declaring that he might amend it in a second edition.

Linda Murphy Kelley (1978KELLEY, Linda Murphy. An Analysis of the Development of the Feminine Image in Selected Novels by Machado de Assis. 1978. 177 f. Tese (Ph.D. em Filosofia) - Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, 1978.) then examined Virgília, Sofia, and Capitu - a work that would inspire Ingrid Stein (1984STEIN, Ingrid. Figuras femininas em Machado de Assis. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1984.). The next year, David J. Vieira (1986VIEIRA, David J. Time in Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro: The Influence of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Henri Bergson's Durée. In: ZAYAS, Eduardo; HUNGATE, Christa (Eds.). Selected Proceedings of Thirty-Fourth Annual Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference. Johnson, TN: University of Tennessee, 1986. p. 169-175.) presented "Time in Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro", in which he discussed the influences of Laurence Sterne and Henri Bergson. The same year, Memórias Póstumas and Dom Casmurro were featured in Adultery in the Novel, by Tony Tanner (1979TANNER, Tony. Adultery in the Novel: Contract and Transgression. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979.). In an essay also first published in 1979, Masao Shimura (2008SHIMURA, Masao. Faulkner, De Assis, Barth: Resemblances and Differences. McHANEY, Thomas L. (Ed.). Faulkner's Studies in Japan. Compiled by Kenzaburo Ohashi and Kiyoyuki Ono. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2008. p. 76-87.) crossed coincidences between Barth's The Floating Opera, Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, and Dom Casmurro, to which Barth's novel is admittedly indebted (BARTH, 1988BARTH, John. The Floating Opera and The End of the Road. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1988.). Comments on the novel then occupy several pages of 1983's The Fiction of Reality, by Pakistani American writer and professor Zulfikar Ghose (1983GHOSE, Zulfikar. The Fiction of Reality. London; Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1983.).

In 1984, Gledson broke with the narratological and psychological lines of study and advanced the sociological approach adopted by Robert Schwarz in his The Deceptive Realism of Machado de Assis: A Dissenting Interpretation of Dom Casmurro, a highly praised book (PERKINS, 1985PERKINS, Juliet. Reviewed work: "The Deceptive Realism of Machado de Assis" by John Gledson. Portuguese Studies, v. 1, p. 228-230, 1985.; HABERLY, 1985HABERLY, David T. Reviewed work: The deceptive Realism of Machado de Assis by John Gledson. Hispania , v. 68, n. 1, p. 79-80, 1985.). Gledson showed how the novel can be read as a historical testament, emphasizing the patriarchal aspect of Brazilian society in the Second Empire and the relationships of favor and dependence rooted in it.

In a literary-philosophical approach, Kevin S. Larsen established parallels between Dom Casmurro and Goethe's The Elective Affinities, partially based on O enigma de Capitu, by Eugênio Gomes (1967GOMES, Eugênio. O enigma de Capitu. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1967.). In the text later published in the Luso-Brazilian Review, Larsen (1991LARSEN, Kevin S. Dom Casmurro and the Elective Affinities. Luso-Brazilian Review , v. 28, n. 2, p. 49-57, 1991.) approached the novels through the theme of the offspring's origin, since in both the child's appearance seems to denounce physical infidelity in a context of imaginary infidelity. Patricia D. Zecevic (1994ZECEVIC, Patricia D. The Beloved as Male Projection: A Comparative Study of Die Wahlverwandtschaften and Dom Casmurro. German Life and Letters, v. 47, n. 4, p. 469-476, 1994.) later deepened this discussion.

Shortly after, another Casmurrian dive brought about a refreshing outlook, this time by Paul Dixon (1989DIXON, Paul. Retired Dreams: Dom Casmurro, Myth and Modernity. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1989. ), from Purdue University, who published the book Retired Dreams: Dom Casmurro, Myth and Modernity after a decade of studies on the novel. He investigated the mythical discourse traced under the surface of the text, rejecting the thesis that it is pure realism; Bento would be on a quest for answers and, in that sense, on an epic-style adventure. Dixon also supervised works on Machado, such as that of Leslie Thomas Dale (1991DALE, Leslie Thomas. The Double in Three Twentieth Century Novels: Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro, Nabokov's Lolita, and Fuentes' Aura. 1991. 168 f. Tese (Doutorado em Filosofia) - Purdue University, Ann Harbor (MI), 1991. ), who compared Dom Casmurro, Lolita and Aura, highlighting the transgressive nature of the narratives - before her, Anne-Marie Gill (1987GILL, Anne-Marie. Dom Casmurro and Lolita: Machado Among the Metafictionists. Luso-Brazilian Review , v. 24, n. 1, p. 17-26, 1987.) had already established a relation between Dom Casmurro and Lolita under the argument of metafiction.

Earl E. Fitz (1989FITZ, Earl E. Machado de Assis. Boston: Twayne, 1989.), from Vanderbilt University, published the book Machado de Assis, in which he echoed Dwyer in defining Dom Casmurro as an "almost perfect" work. He would return to the novel several times throughout his vast Machadian critique. As Dixon, Fitz has also been supervising various works on Machado. Under his guidance, James Krause - a ferocious critic of Scott-Buccleuch's translation (KRAUSE, 2010KRAUSE, James R. Translation and the Reception and Influence of Latin American Literature in the United States. 2010. 269 f. Tese (Ph.D. em Filosofia) - Vanderbilt University, Nashville, 2010.; 2015) - would become another active Machadian critic. He has been guiding new scholars into the Machadian path as well - among others, Dania Genine Ellingson's (2019ELLINGSON, Dania Genine. A experiência machadiana: Experience Design Theory in Dom Casmurro. 2019. 44 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Artes) - Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Brigham Young University, Provo (UT), 2019.) master's thesis has recently presented an innovative look on the reading of Dom Casmurro as a structured emotional experience.

Returning to the 1990s, Cambridge professor Maria Manuel Gabão Lisboa (1996LISBOA, Maria Manuel Gabão. Machado de Assis and Feminism: Re-reading the Heart of the Companion. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1996.) promoted a relevant step toward feminist readings in her dissertation turned later into the book Machado de Assis and Feminism, in which she considers the end of Capitu as a murder symbolically committed by Bento.

Imagination as a crucial element of the novel set the philosophical argument of José Raimundo Maia Neto (1994MAIA NETO, José Raimundo. Machado de Assis: The Brazilian Pyrrhonian. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1994. ), whose study Machado de Assis, the Brazilian Pyrrhonian was published in English by Purdue University Press. Contradicting the thesis that Casmurro writes the novel to convince the reader of his truth, Maia Neto suggested that, by presenting his belief without any objectivity or evidence, the narrator expresses fragility.

Gledson (1995______. The Character of Capitu in Machado de Assis's Dom Casmurro. In: JESSE, Lisa (Org.). Portuguese at Leeds: A Selection of Essays from the Annual Semana Portuguesa. Leeds: Trinity and All Saints College, 1995. p. 59-72.) wrote specifically about Capitu, while Lori Ween (1997WEEN, Lori. The Missing Middle: Two Translations of Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro. Translation Review, v. 53, n. 1, p. 11-15, 1997.) compared Caldwell's and Scott-Buccleuch's renderings - an important step towards Casmurrian reception outside Brazil, since it demonstrates a concern with how the novel circulates among the anglophone audience. More than a decade later, Karen Sherwood Sotelino (2008SOTELINO, Karen Catherine Sherwood. The Unreliable Memories of Machado de Assis: the Ambiguous Language of Remembrance in Translation. 2008. 329 f. Tese (Doutorado em Filosofia da Literatura) - University of California, Santa Cruz, 2008.), translator of Resurreição into English (as Ressurection, 2013), also defended a dissertation about Caldwell's and Gledson's translations.

Richard Graham (1999GRAHAM, Richard (Ed.). Machado de Assis: Reflections on a Brazilian Master Writer. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.) then edited Machado de Assis: Reflections on a Brazilian Master Writer with two of the four chapters focused on the novel. Gledson (1999______. Realism and Intentionalism Revisited. In: GRAHAM, Richard (Ed.). Machado de Assis: Reflections on a Brazilian Master Writer. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999. p. 1-22. ) resumed his thesis on the realism built by Machado, while João Adolfo Hansen (1999______. Dom Casmurro: Simulacrum and Allegory. In: GRAHAM, Richard (Ed.). Machado de Assis: Reflections on a Brazilian Master Writer. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999. p. 23-50.) had an essay previously published in Brazil translated as "Dom Casmurro: Simulacrum and Allegory", approaching authorship and fiction. He had also authored the afterword of Gledson's translation of the novel, intitled "Dom Casmurro, the Fruit and the Rind" (HANSEN, 1997HANSEN, João Adolfo. Dom Casmurro, the Fruit and the Rind: An Afterword. In: ASSIS, Machado de. Dom Casmurro. Translated by John Gledson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. p. 245-257.). Mac Adam (1999_____. The Rhetoric of Jealousy: Dom Casmurro. Hispanic Review, v. 67, n. 1, p. 51-62, 1999.) returned to the novel that same year, addressing the theme of jealousy based on Rousseau's considerations on this emotion.

By the end of the 20th century, criticism was gradually amplifying, deepening, and turning towards a postcolonial bias, as the next section illustrates.

II. 21st century readings

A century had passed since the first publication of Dom Casmurro, and its criticism was palpably intensified in English. Since the early 2000s, Dom Casmurro has also been featured on "books you must read before you die"-type checklists (see BOXALL, 2011BOXALL, Peter (Ed.). 1001 books you must read before you die. London: Cassell Illustrated, 2011.; READ, 2015READ, Piers Paul. Top 10 novels about unfaithful wives. The Guardian, 2 Dec. 2015. ) and cited as a favorite book or an influence by literary celebrities (see GRIFFITH, 2007GRIFFITH, Michael. Appreciation of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis's Dom Casmurro. In: ZANE, J. Peder (Ed.). The Top Ten: writers pick their favorite books. New York; London: W. W. Norton, 2007. p. 69-70.; APOSTOL, 2022APOSTOL, Gina. 5 Questions with Gina Apostol, Author of Bibliolepsy. City Lights, 14 Jan. 2022. Available at: Available at: https://citylights.com/5-questions-with-gina-apostol-author-of-bibliolepsy/ . Access on: 20 Feb. 2023.
https://citylights.com/5-questions-with-...
), a symptom of dissemination on the margins of pop culture.

Three chapters were centered on Dom Casmurro in the voluminous The Author as Plagiarist, edited by João Cezar de Castro Rocha (2006ROCHA, João Cezar de Castro (Ed.). The Author as Plagiarist: The Case of Machado de Assis. Dartmouth, MA: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth , 2006.), a collection of 45 essays by contemporary Machadian critics. Each of the entries offered a different interpretation. German professor Karl Ludwig Pfeiffer (2006PFEIFFER, Karl Ludwig. The (Lack of) Feeling of What Happens: Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro. In: ROCHA, João Cezar de Castro (Ed.). The Author as Plagiarist: The Case of Machado de Assis. Dartmouth, MA: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth , 2006. p. 373-389.) analyzed the novel through contemporary theories about sensations and emotions, proposing that Capitu, Escobar, and José Dias are better equipped to deal with feelings than the pampered Bentinho. Kathrin Rosenfield (2006ROSENFIELD, Kathrin H. Irony in Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro: Reflections on Anti-Tragic Cordiality. In: ROCHA, João Cezar de Castro (Ed.). The Author as Plagiarist: the case of Machado de Assis. Dartmouth (MA): University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 2006. p. 390-406.), translated into English by Paulo Henriques Britto, approached the irony of the novel as an anti-tragic resource, arguing that Machado gives a burlesque tone to a Flaubertian narrative. Finally, in "Strategies of Deceit: Dom Casmurro", Marta de Senna (2006SENNA, Marta de. Strategies of Deceit: Dom Casmurro. In: ROCHA, João Cezar de Castro (Ed.). The Author as Plagiarist: the case of Machado de Assis. Dartmouth, MA: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth , 2006. p. 407-419.) collected literary references cited in a distorted manner by the narrator, proving this to be one of his stratagems to manipulate the reader.

Around the same time, José Luiz Passos (2005PASSOS, José Luiz. Othello and Hugo in Machado de Assis. In: KLIMAN, Bernice W.; SANTOS, Rick J. (Orgs.). Latin American Shakespeares. Madison; Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005. p. 166-182.) returned to Caldwell by relating Dom Casmurro and Othello in Latin American Shakespeares, while Peixoto (2005PEIXOTO, Marta. Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis. In: KRISTAL, Efraín (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. p. 219-231.) contributed with a chapter about Dom Casmurro to The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel. Adding to an already quite diversified gallery of interpretations, Glenna Berry-Horton (2005BERRY-HORTON, Glenna. Fatal Attractions in Luso-Brazilian Literature: A Study of Machado de Assis, Eça de Queirós, and Contemporary Poets. 2005. 240 f. Tese (Ph.D. em Literatura) - University of California, Santa Barbara, 2005.) connected Dom Casmurro to Eça de Queirós's Os Maias, while Antonio Carlos Quicoli (2007QUICOLI, Antonio Carlos. The Enigma of Ezequiel and the Covert Theme of Dom Casmurro. Luso-Brazilian Review , v. 44, n. 1, p. 61-93, 2007.) argued in the article “The Enigma of Ezequiel and the Covert Theme of Dom Casmurro” that the narrator denounces himself through the inscription on Ezequiel's tombstone, quoted in the novel as "You were perfect in your ways"; the continuation omitted by Bento speaks of iniquity, a quality of his, not his son's.

Machado then experienced a miniboom in the English-speaking community after 2008, probably related to the anniversary of his death (see ROHTER, 2008ROHTER, Larry. After a Century, a Literary Reputation Finally Blooms. The New York Times On the Web, 13 Sep. 2008.). There was a new wave of mentions in the media and a boost in criticism, including translations of texts originally published in Brazil - as "Capitu, the Bride of Dom Casmurro", by Schwarz (2012SCHWARZ, Roberto. Capitu, the Bride of Dom Casmurro. Translated by John Gledson. In: MULHERN, Francis (Ed.). Two Girls and Other Essays. London: Verso, 2012. p. 57-91. ), translated by Gledson - and a palpable turn towards postcolonial studies.

Professor of sociology G. Reginald Daniel (2012DANIEL, G. Reginald. Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist. Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.) reinterpreted notions introduced by Caldwell, such as the disguise in the name "Casmurro" and Capitu's economic and social disadvantage in relation to the Santiagos. His considerations focused on race and social status integrate a postcolonial trend whose seed seems to have been planted as early as 1929 by Lloyd Morris in an article published in the New Herald Tribune, which brought attention to the fact that Machado, one of the most celebrated Brazilian writers, was black (MORRIS, 1929MORRIS, Lloyd. The Negro "Renaissance". New York Herald Tribune, p. L6, 15 Sep. 1929., p. L6), a question later revisited by Antonio Olliz Boyd (1975BOYD, Antonio Olliz. The Concept of Black Esthetics as Seen in Selected Works of Three Latin American Writers: Machado de Assis, Nicolás Guillén e Adalberto Ortiz. 1975. 238 f. Tese (Ph.D. em Filosofia) - Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Stanford University, Palo Alto (CA), 1975.; 1992______. The Social and Ethnic Contexts of Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro. Afro-Hispanic Review, v. 11, n. 1-3, p. 34-41, 1992.) as well.

By finding support on Schwarz's proposition of the "victory of caprice" when referring to the spoilt nature of Brás Cubas and Bento Santiago, Franco Moretti (2013MORETTI, Franco. The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature. London; New York: Verso, 2013.), in his study The Bourgeois, pointed to the bourgeois aspect of "Machado's eternally immature heroes" and cited Bento's annoyance "by a friend [Manduca] who has spoilt his afternoon of daydreams by - dying" (MORETTI, 2013MORETTI, Franco. The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature. London; New York: Verso, 2013., p. 147).

Eli Carter (2014CARTER, Eli. Rereading Dom Casmurro - aesthetic hybridity in Capitu. Machado de Assis em Linha - Revista Eletrônica de Estudos Machadianos, v. 7, n. 13, p. 19-43, 2014. ) analyzed the novel's adaptation into the miniseries Capitu, by Luiz Fernando Carvalho, centered around the female character's enigma.3 3 Even though published in a Brazilian academic journal, being available on-line now allows access all over the world. The distinction between national and international becomes less relevant in the Internet age, but the language of publication still matters. Fitz (2015______. Machado de Assis and Female Characterization: The Novels. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2015. ) then resumed his Machadian studies in Machado de Assis and Female Characterization, arguing that it is the lacunar discourse, which emulates the human inability to express oneself, the most interesting aspect of Dom Casmurro. That same year, a book by Rocha (2015______. Machado de Assis: Toward a Poetics of Emulation (Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture). Translated by Flora Thomson-DeVaux. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2015.) about Machado was translated by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux into English: Machado de Assis: Toward a Poetics of Emulation. It claimed that Dom Casmurro constitutes a radical reading of Othello, but an original one, in an apparent paradoxical hypothesis.

K. David Jackson (2015______. Machado de Assis: a literary life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.) then devoted a chapter of his Machado de Assis - A Literary Life to the novel, drawing from Caldwell the argument of dissimulation: "Dom Casmurro is a novel that documents Bento Santiago's psychological degeneration", guided by subconscious forces linked to the trauma he suffers after the drowning of his friend Escobar (JACKSON, 2015______. Machado de Assis: a literary life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015., p. 234-253).

The following year brought Peixoto's dive into "the mythic and historical dimensions of Capitu's multiple characterizations" (PEIXOTO, 2016______. Capitu's Curiosity: Undecidability and Questions of Gender in Dom Casmurro. In: AIDOO, Lamonte; SILVA, Daniel F. (Eds.). Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. p. 149-162., p. 151), while Camilo Gomides confirmed the unsolvable duality of the novel in "Homoaffectivity Exemplified in Dom Casmurro", examining the hypothesis of how psychological roles manifest in the story: "Capitu is a conduit for Bento's love-desire-hate toward Escobar" (GOMIDES, 2016GOMIDES, Camilo. Homoaffectivity Exemplified in Dom Casmurro. In: AIDOO, Lamonte; SILVA, Daniel F. (Eds.). Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. p. 181-188., p. 182). A third plunge into the psychological and social meanderings of the novel was presented in the chapter "Masculinity and Matrimonial Secrets in Dom Casmurro", in which Richard Miskolci (2016MISKOLCI, Richard. Masculinity and Matrimonial Secrets in Dom Casmurro. In: AIDOO, Lamonte; SILVA, Daniel F. (Eds.). Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan , 2016. p. 189-208.) discussed the decay of the marriage institution in Brazil at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Fitz revisited the Brazilian author again in Machado de Assis and Narrative Theory, placing Machado as a "theoretician of the novel form" (FITZ, 2019______. Machado de Assis and Narrative Theory: Language, Imitation, Art, and Verisimilitude in the Last Six Novels. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2019., p. 1). In the chapter about Dom Casmurro, he argued that "the entire plot hangs on the question of verisimilitude" (FITZ, 2019______. Machado de Assis and Narrative Theory: Language, Imitation, Art, and Verisimilitude in the Last Six Novels. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2019., p. 109). Also in 2019, Dom Casmurro was chosen as the novel representing jealousy in the book Affective Disorders, by Bede Scott (2019SCOTT, Bede. Affective Disorders: Emotion in Colonial and Postcolonial Literature. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019.), who returned to the issue of illusion versus reality previously discussed by Larsen and Maia Neto, but adding a sociogenic layer to it, relating Bento's jealousy to the incongruities generated by patronage and slavery in the Brazilian society as portrayed by Machado.

The beginning of the 2020s indicates that there might be another decade of intense Casmurrian studies. Comparative Perspectives on The Rise of Brazilian Novel, edited by Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva and Sandra Guardini Vasconcelos (2020______; VASCONCELOS, Sandra Guardini (Eds.). Comparative Perspectives on the Rise of the Brazilian Novel. London: UCL Press, 2020.) and published in London, brought a chapter signed by Silva intitled "Capitu against the Elegiac Narrator". Silva had already approached the novel in the article "The Elegy of Dom Casmurro" (SILVA, 2018SILVA, Ana Cláudia Suriani da. The Elegy of Dom Casmurro. Comparative Literature Studies, v. 55, n. 3, p. 540-569, 2018.) and would more recently approximate Dom Casmurro to Graciliano Ramos's São Bernardo, claiming that in both novels "the female voice is intermediated by the narrator's, therefore, is his (re)construction and a product of his fantasy" (SILVA, 2022_____. Echoes of the Elegiac Novel in Brazilian Literature. Machado de Assis em Linha - Revista Eletrônica de Estudos Machadianos, São Paulo, v. 15, p. 1-16, 2022. , p. 6).

The fourth book in English specifically about the novel, Fashion and Irony in Dom Casmurro, by Geanneti Tavares Salomon (2021SALOMON, Geanneti Tavares. Fashion and Irony in Dom Casmurro. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2021.), a translation of a Brazilian edition, was published in London in 2021. And, in 2022, a new comprehensive study about Machado was published by Mario Higa, professor at Middlebury College in Vermont. In Machado de Assis: The World Keeps Changing to Remain the Same, Higa (2022HIGA, Mario. Machado de Assis: The World Keeps Changing to Remain the Same. Woodbridge (UK); Rochester, NY (US): Boydell & Brewer, 2022., p. 29) writes: "The novel Dom Casmurro produced two heroines: the main female character, Capitu, who is arguably the most notable female character of Brazilian literature; and Helen Caldwell, who is responsible for changing the way we read Machado's book".

III. Brief discussion and final remarks

As generally happens in the dissemination of a peripheral author in the English-speaking literary system, Machado has been introduced and reinforced through the years by key players - translators, editors, writers, and scholars endeavored to make his work available and well-known. The number of articles and book chapters is significant, but it is the diversity of approaches that is most striking.

To cite the main aspects vastly present among the well-crafted studies on Dom Casmurro, there are the psychological and psychoanalytical readings (CALDWELL, 1960CALDWELL, Helen. The Brazilian Othello of Machado De Assis. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press , 1960. ; JACKSON, 2015______. Machado de Assis: a literary life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.; GOMIDES, 2016GOMIDES, Camilo. Homoaffectivity Exemplified in Dom Casmurro. In: AIDOO, Lamonte; SILVA, Daniel F. (Eds.). Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. p. 181-188.; MISKOLCI, 2016MISKOLCI, Richard. Masculinity and Matrimonial Secrets in Dom Casmurro. In: AIDOO, Lamonte; SILVA, Daniel F. (Eds.). Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan , 2016. p. 189-208.); the sociological ones, which emphasize the portrait painted by Machado of the Carioca society in the transition between Empire and Republic, which includes the relations of favor sewn into the intricacies of our social fabric (GLEDSON, 1984GLEDSON, John. The Deceptive Realism of Machado de Assis: A Dissenting Interpretation of Dom Casmurro. Liverpool: F. Cairns, 1984.; SCHWARZ, 2012SCHWARZ, Roberto. Capitu, the Bride of Dom Casmurro. Translated by John Gledson. In: MULHERN, Francis (Ed.). Two Girls and Other Essays. London: Verso, 2012. p. 57-91. ; DANIEL, 2012DANIEL, G. Reginald. Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist. Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.; MORETTI, 2013MORETTI, Franco. The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature. London; New York: Verso, 2013.; SCOTT, 2019SCOTT, Bede. Affective Disorders: Emotion in Colonial and Postcolonial Literature. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019.); the narratological ones, which are mainly concerned with the unreliable narrator, plus studies focused on style (ELLIS, 1962ELLIS, Keith. Technique and Ambiguity in Dom Casmurro. Hispania , v. 45, n. 3, p. 436-440, 1962.; MAC ADAM, 1972/1973MAC ADAM, Alfred. Machado de Assis: An Introduction to Latin American Satire. Revista Hispánica Moderna, a. 37, n. 3, p. 180-187, 1972/1973.; NUNES, 1975NUNES, Maria Luisa. Machado de Assis’ Theory of the Novel. Latin American Literary Review, v. 4, n. 7, p. 57-66, 1975.; 1983______. The Craft of an Absolute Winner: Characterization and Narratology in the Novels of Machado de Assis. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1983.; TURNER, 1976TURNER, Doris J. A Clarification of some Strange Chapters in Machado's Dom Casmurro. Luso-Brazilian Review , v. 13, n. 1, p. 55-66, 1976.; KELLUM, 1976KELLUM, Sharon Smart. The Art of Self-Incrimination: Studies in Unreliable Narration. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press , 1976. ; DWYER, 1977DWYER, John P. Dom Casmurro and the Opera Aperta. INTI, n. 5-6, p. 157-162, 1977.; GHOSE, 1983GHOSE, Zulfikar. The Fiction of Reality. London; Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1983.; HANSEN, 1997HANSEN, João Adolfo. Dom Casmurro, the Fruit and the Rind: An Afterword. In: ASSIS, Machado de. Dom Casmurro. Translated by John Gledson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. p. 245-257.; ROSENFIELD, 2006ROSENFIELD, Kathrin H. Irony in Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro: Reflections on Anti-Tragic Cordiality. In: ROCHA, João Cezar de Castro (Ed.). The Author as Plagiarist: the case of Machado de Assis. Dartmouth (MA): University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 2006. p. 390-406.; PEIXOTO, 2005PEIXOTO, Marta. Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis. In: KRISTAL, Efraín (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. p. 219-231.; 2016; ROCHA, 2015______. Machado de Assis: Toward a Poetics of Emulation (Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture). Translated by Flora Thomson-DeVaux. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2015.; SILVA, 2018SILVA, Ana Cláudia Suriani da. The Elegy of Dom Casmurro. Comparative Literature Studies, v. 55, n. 3, p. 540-569, 2018.; SALOMON, 2021SALOMON, Geanneti Tavares. Fashion and Irony in Dom Casmurro. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2021.); those that investigate intertextuality, covering the numerous direct and indirect references to other works and to Western art as a whole (ZIOMEK, 1968ZIOMEK, Henryk. Parallel Ingredients in Don Quixote and Dom Casmurro. Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, v. 2, n. 2, p. 229-241, 1968.; ELLIS, 1971______. Ambiguity and Point of View in Some Novelistic Representations of Jealousy. MLN, v. 86, n. 6, p. 891-909, 1971.; BASDEKIS, 1964BASDEKIS, Demetrius. Dualism in Notes from Underground and Dom Casmurro. Revista de Letras, Assis, v. 5, p. 117-124, 1964.; VIEIRA, 1986VIEIRA, David J. Time in Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro: The Influence of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Henri Bergson's Durée. In: ZAYAS, Eduardo; HUNGATE, Christa (Eds.). Selected Proceedings of Thirty-Fourth Annual Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference. Johnson, TN: University of Tennessee, 1986. p. 169-175.; GILL, 1984; 1987GILL, Anne-Marie. Dom Casmurro and Lolita: Machado Among the Metafictionists. Luso-Brazilian Review , v. 24, n. 1, p. 17-26, 1987.; LARSEN, 1991LARSEN, Kevin S. Dom Casmurro and the Elective Affinities. Luso-Brazilian Review , v. 28, n. 2, p. 49-57, 1991.; DALE, 1991DALE, Leslie Thomas. The Double in Three Twentieth Century Novels: Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro, Nabokov's Lolita, and Fuentes' Aura. 1991. 168 f. Tese (Doutorado em Filosofia) - Purdue University, Ann Harbor (MI), 1991. ; ZECEVIC, 1994ZECEVIC, Patricia D. The Beloved as Male Projection: A Comparative Study of Die Wahlverwandtschaften and Dom Casmurro. German Life and Letters, v. 47, n. 4, p. 469-476, 1994.; BERRY-HORTON, 2008BERRY-HORTON, Glenna. Fatal Attractions in Luso-Brazilian Literature: A Study of Machado de Assis, Eça de Queirós, and Contemporary Poets. 2005. 240 f. Tese (Ph.D. em Literatura) - University of California, Santa Barbara, 2005.; PASSOS, 2005PASSOS, José Luiz. Othello and Hugo in Machado de Assis. In: KLIMAN, Bernice W.; SANTOS, Rick J. (Orgs.). Latin American Shakespeares. Madison; Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005. p. 166-182.; SENNA, 2006SENNA, Marta de. Strategies of Deceit: Dom Casmurro. In: ROCHA, João Cezar de Castro (Ed.). The Author as Plagiarist: the case of Machado de Assis. Dartmouth, MA: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth , 2006. p. 407-419.; SHIMURA, 2008SHIMURA, Masao. Faulkner, De Assis, Barth: Resemblances and Differences. McHANEY, Thomas L. (Ed.). Faulkner's Studies in Japan. Compiled by Kenzaburo Ohashi and Kiyoyuki Ono. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2008. p. 76-87.; SILVA, 2022_____. Echoes of the Elegiac Novel in Brazilian Literature. Machado de Assis em Linha - Revista Eletrônica de Estudos Machadianos, São Paulo, v. 15, p. 1-16, 2022. ); those specifically about Capitu and/or feminist readings (KELLEY, 1978KELLEY, Linda Murphy. An Analysis of the Development of the Feminine Image in Selected Novels by Machado de Assis. 1978. 177 f. Tese (Ph.D. em Filosofia) - Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, 1978.; GLEDSON, 1995______. The Character of Capitu in Machado de Assis's Dom Casmurro. In: JESSE, Lisa (Org.). Portuguese at Leeds: A Selection of Essays from the Annual Semana Portuguesa. Leeds: Trinity and All Saints College, 1995. p. 59-72.; LISBOA, 1996LISBOA, Maria Manuel Gabão. Machado de Assis and Feminism: Re-reading the Heart of the Companion. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1996.; CARTER, 2014CARTER, Eli. Rereading Dom Casmurro - aesthetic hybridity in Capitu. Machado de Assis em Linha - Revista Eletrônica de Estudos Machadianos, v. 7, n. 13, p. 19-43, 2014. ; FITZ, 2015______. Machado de Assis and Female Characterization: The Novels. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2015. ); translation criticism (WEEN, 1997WEEN, Lori. The Missing Middle: Two Translations of Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro. Translation Review, v. 53, n. 1, p. 11-15, 1997.; SOTELINO, 2008SOTELINO, Karen Catherine Sherwood. The Unreliable Memories of Machado de Assis: the Ambiguous Language of Remembrance in Translation. 2008. 329 f. Tese (Doutorado em Filosofia da Literatura) - University of California, Santa Cruz, 2008.; KRAUSE, 2015______. The translator's sleight of hand: Robert L. Scott-Buccleuch as unreliable reader of Dom Casmurro. Machado de Assis em Linha - Revista Eletrônica de Estudos Machadianos, São Paulo, v. 8, n. 16, p. 62-81, 2015.); investigations on jealousy, adultery, and dissimulation (PARAM, 1970PARAM, Charles. Jealousy in the Novels of Machado de Assis. Hispania , v. 53, n. 2, p. 198-206, 1970.; TANNER, 1979TANNER, Tony. Adultery in the Novel: Contract and Transgression. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979.; ZECEVIC, 1994ZECEVIC, Patricia D. The Beloved as Male Projection: A Comparative Study of Die Wahlverwandtschaften and Dom Casmurro. German Life and Letters, v. 47, n. 4, p. 469-476, 1994.; QUICOLI, 2007QUICOLI, Antonio Carlos. The Enigma of Ezequiel and the Covert Theme of Dom Casmurro. Luso-Brazilian Review , v. 44, n. 1, p. 61-93, 2007.; SCOTT, 2019SCOTT, Bede. Affective Disorders: Emotion in Colonial and Postcolonial Literature. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019.); mythical and philosophical (DIXON, 1989DIXON, Paul. Retired Dreams: Dom Casmurro, Myth and Modernity. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1989. ; MAIA NETO, 1994MAIA NETO, José Raimundo. Machado de Assis: The Brazilian Pyrrhonian. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1994. ; PEIXOTO, 2016______. Capitu's Curiosity: Undecidability and Questions of Gender in Dom Casmurro. In: AIDOO, Lamonte; SILVA, Daniel F. (Eds.). Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. p. 149-162.); based on cognitive approaches and studies on emotions (PFEIFFER, 2006PFEIFFER, Karl Ludwig. The (Lack of) Feeling of What Happens: Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro. In: ROCHA, João Cezar de Castro (Ed.). The Author as Plagiarist: The Case of Machado de Assis. Dartmouth, MA: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth , 2006. p. 373-389.; ELLINGSON, 2019ELLINGSON, Dania Genine. A experiência machadiana: Experience Design Theory in Dom Casmurro. 2019. 44 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Artes) - Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Brigham Young University, Provo (UT), 2019.). Evidently, some of these cross or ally more than one approach.

Despite the long list of sources cited, this survey by no means exhausts the reflections published in English about Dom Casmurro. It does demonstrate, however, that 120 years after the Brazilian publication of the novel and 70 years after its introduction into the anglophone world, it continues to motivate scholars, involving them in its elusive intricacies. From a relatively late discovery in the 1950s on, there has been a slow and gradual expansion and deepening of its critical legacy.

In addition to maintaining this continuous survey of sources published in English, future studies may cover Dom Casmurro's critical legacy in other languages. By crossing references, they can also promote associations between approaches distant in time, place, or language.

References

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  • 1
    Among the main databases surveyed are the physical and digital collection of the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, in Rio de Janeiro; the collection of the New York Public Library; the libraries of the University of São Paulo, Yale University, and Harvard University; the academic databases JSTOR and ProQuest Historical News & Newspapers, the latter to search for mentions in journalistic sources. As commercial research sources, Amazon and AbeBooks were systematically searched. In the search spaces of all these sources, the search terms adopted were "dom+casmurro", "machado+de+assis+dom+casmurro", and "machado+de+assis+novels" (this is based on the notion of "words co-occurrence" (see MORESI; PINHO, 2021MORESI, Eduardo Amadeu Dutra Moresi; PINHO, Isabel. Proposta de abordagem para refinamento de pesquisa bibliográfica. New Trends in Qualitative Research , v. 9, p. 11-20, 2021.). Brief mentions of Dom Casmurro without any further comment were not considered. Mentions that involve at least some descriptive or critical comment were considered significant and included in the survey.
  • 2
    The translations of the novel and their paratexts have already been explored at length (see COSTA, 2016COSTA, Cynthia Beatrice. Dom Casmurro em inglês: tradução e recepção de um clássico brasileiro. 2016. 392 f. Tese (Doutorado em Estudos da Tradução) - Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Tradução, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, 2016.). The present study excludes digital editions, since they are often presented without any reliable information about authorship, translation and editing process, or place of origin. Currently, there are at least five editions of Dom Casmurro in English on Amazon with insufficient data. Brazilian bilingual edition by São Paulo-based publisher Landmark (ASSIS, 2020______. Dom Casmurro. Translated by Sávio Ramos Silva. São Paulo: Landmark, 2020.), with Sávio Ramos Silva's translation, is not considered in the present survey as it circulates in the Brazilian market only.
  • 3
    Even though published in a Brazilian academic journal, being available on-line now allows access all over the world. The distinction between national and international becomes less relevant in the Internet age, but the language of publication still matters.

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    09 Oct 2023
  • Date of issue
    2023

History

  • Received
    23 Feb 2023
  • Accepted
    11 May 2023
Universidade de São Paulo - Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, 403 sl 38, 05508-900 São Paulo, SP Brasil - São Paulo - SP - Brazil
E-mail: machadodeassis.emlinha@usp.br