Nowadays, Machado de Assis would be a blogger

Abstract

This essay retraces the path taken by Brazilian literature from the 1840s to the present, to raise the ironic hypothesis that poetry finds in the computer the possibility of recovering the space and prestige it had before the consolidation of the novel in the tropics. The approach respects chronology, but it is intended to be less historiographical than theoretical. It balances the focus of aesthetic searches undertaken in certain periods of time and the analysis of changes brought about by new artifacts designed to produce and publish fiction. The discussion is anchored in works by outstanding authors, with emphasis on Machado de Assis, who practiced different literary genres and had his own career influenced by their reorganization. His presence from the opening to the closing of this text offers, in addition, the benefit of immunizing it against the spurious idea of evolution in the field of artistic creation.