Papeis Avulsos

Machado de Assis, 1839-1908Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.5

Word count: 323K words
Chapters: 33

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Papeis Avulsos by Machado de AssisAuthor: Machado de Assis, 1839-1908,Language: Portuguese, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Apr 19, 2018

Editor's review

Papeis Avulsos ("Scattered Pages") is a collection of short works by the Brazilian writer Machado de Assis, in the original Portuguese and released as a free eBook by Project Gutenberg. Machado is a towering figure in Brazilian literary history, known for his finely wrought psychological portraiture, flexible narrative perspectives, and ironic eye for society and human nature. The book gathers several independent stories of varying subject matter and tone, well suited to being read one piece at a time rather than for continuous plot. For Portuguese learners, it is a practical text for encountering nineteenth-century written Brazilian Portuguese, offering a feel for the period's sentence patterns and vocabulary; for literary readers, it offers a glimpse of the essential character of Machado's short fiction. As a public-domain eBook, its edition information is limited; readers are advised to focus on the works themselves rather than relying heavily on supplementary notes. Overall it suits slow, repeated reading, especially going back afterward to reflect on the narrator's tone and the spaces left unsaid.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Advanced learners of Portuguese who want to read original short stories
Readers interested in Brazilian literature and Machado's work
Literary readers who enjoy short stories and reading in scattered pieces
Readers studying nineteenth-century written Portuguese expression

Not a good fit for

Readers with no Portuguese at all and no parallel translation to assist them
Readers expecting long, continuous plots and strong suspense
Researchers needing detailed scholarly annotation and textual collation

Reading tips

Read just one piece at a time, then summarize the plot and the narrator's attitude in two or three sentences.
Keep a notebook to record recurring sentence patterns and key words, building up Portuguese expression.
Start with shorter, clearer pieces before moving on to more subtle works.
On a second reading, pay attention to narrative perspective and ironic tone to appreciate Machado's craft.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book in Portuguese or English?

This is the original Portuguese edition, released as an eBook by Project Gutenberg. The information lists its language as Portuguese, and the text is in Portuguese, suiting readers with some Portuguese reading ability; those with insufficient grounding can use a translation for support.

What kind of book is Papeis Avulsos?

From the available information, it is a work by Machado de Assis and is a collection of short works, with each piece relatively independent. For the specific pieces and themes, refer to the text itself; the available information does not list each piece's content.

Can I understand it without notes?

This is a public-domain electronic text and generally does not come with detailed notes. Readers with intermediate or higher Portuguese reading ability can read through with a dictionary; when encountering period expressions or unclear cultural background, they may skip ahead first, grasp the overall meaning, and then look back.

Is it suitable as Portuguese learning material?

It can serve as advanced reading material, but the text dates from the nineteenth century, and its sentence patterns and vocabulary carry period features that are not entirely the same as contemporary speech. It is best used after acquiring some grammatical grounding, mainly for extensive reading rather than sentence-by-sentence analysis.

Comments

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About the author

Machado de Assis, 1839-1908 Author

Machado de Assis (1839–1908) is one of the most influential writers in Brazilian literary history, with nine of his works included in this collection. His major novels, such as Dom Casmurro, Memorias Posthumas de Braz Cubas, Quincas Borba, and Esau e Jacob, focus largely on social life and psychology in Rio de Janeiro, employing irony, restrained narration, and unreliable narrators, with plots often revolving around jealousy, marriage, ambition, and identity. Short-story collections such as Papeis Avulsos and Historias Sem Data show his skill in concise storytelling, with a cool, humorous tone. Because public information is limited, details of his early life and biography are omitted here; his works nevertheless reveal a sustained scrutiny of human weakness and social hypocrisy, and his influence on later Brazilian literature is profound.