Politics, social customs and faith: an analysis of Machado de Assis's religious metaphors during the Old Republic

Abstract

Machado de Assis is known for approaching political issues in a subtle way, making it necessary to be attentive to the details of his texts to understand the social idiosyncrasies he exposed. During the republican period, he became even more discreet, since censorship - especially during Floriano Peixoto's government - ¿¿did not allow explicit positions. In his texts, it was possible to see the exposure of government ills through metaphors, many of them of biblical origin. In the novel Esau and Jacob, for example, he uses the biblical story of sibling rivalry to mirror the political disputes between monarchists and republicans. Furthermore, allusions to the Old and New Testament can also be seen in the chronicles published in the column A Semana, in which he used such metaphors to expose politics in a veiled manner. Thus, the present project proposes to analyze the religious references made by Machado both in Esaú e Jacó, and in the writings dated September 4, 1892 - O sermão do Diabo - and January 29, 1893, published by the previously mentioned periodical, articulating romance and chronicles of the historical and political context of the first republic.