Abstract

Machado de Assis was the 19th century Brazilian writer whose work registered the nihilism with greater consistency. Despite the fact that the presence of nihilism in his works has already been recognized, the subject received little attention from critics and scholars, remaining an unexplored field. This paper aims to fill this gap in the critical fortune, and not only argue for the relevance of the subject, but also in favor of the thesis that the Brazilian writer had an acute awareness of the complex and multifaceted nature of the nineteenth-century nihilism. Attentive to the rise of nihilism in 19th century, Machado de Assis approached the problem in a critical and comic tone, contrasting their approach with the philosophical tradition seriousness. By writing with a playful pen, he used humor as one of the main principles of literary composition in his work. He enriched this feature using it as a kind of centerpiece to criticize and deride the spirit of his time, demonstrating that the problem of nihilism may be responded to with an attitude of good humor and irony.