THE SPECIFICITY OF HISTORICAL REPRESENTATION IN ESAU E JACO, BY MACHADO DE ASSIS

This paper intends to analyze the special way Machado de Assis builds the representation of Brazilian historical facts in the novel Esaue Jaco. This novel brings in its plot two important historical events that happened in the late Nineteenth century: the Abolition of Slavery, in 1888; and the Proclamation of the Republic, in 1889. The literary treatment given by the author to the events, printing irrelevance to them, in the context of the plot, reveals that to build a Brazilian realism, in those circumstances, it was necessary to show the course of history based on the absence of transformation.