Pedro e Paulo: representantes dos conflitos sociopolíticos na transição do Império à República no romance Esaú e Jacó

Abstract

This article presents the importance of the established literature of Machado de Assis for the study of the history of imperial Brazil thanks to the knowledge consolidated for decades about his brilliant work, which according to one of his important critics, John Gledson, his experience as a narrator does not end in itself, but in its results of realistic objectives. The choice of the novel was purposeful, Machado clearly presents the characters Pedro and Paulo as political actors, passionate and highly unstable in their relationship as brothers in a scenario of Rio de Janeiro's reality of the 1870s whose social and political conflicts until the 1890s suffer a process of understanding and systematization that goes beyond the technical and aesthetic production of the work. Realism is the result of the representations present in the novel, presented in this article according to the theoretical perspective of Representation, by Roger Chartier.