TERRITORIES OF INVISIBILITY: MACHADO DE ASSIS AND THE SUBURBS OF RIO

João Cezar de Castro Rocha is a renowned Brazilian intellectual, historian, and Full Professor of Comparative Literature at UERJ. With a solid academic background, he is a leading figure in the study of Brazilian culture, mimetic theory, and literary criticism. As the editor of the complete short stories of Machado de Assis, his research explores the intersections of literature, memory, national identity, and popular cultural expression. In this lecture, he offers a renewed perspective on the work of Machado de Assis through a rarely explored lens: his relationship with music. By analyzing subtle musical references and the social listening embedded in Machado’s prose, João Cezar guides us through the territories of invisibility — the suburbs of 19th-century Rio de Janeiro — revealing how the writer captured, reinterpreted, and translated the sounds of the city and of the popular classes with remarkable literary sensitivity.