'The seed of madness exists in all of us and with no warning may attack, overpower, crush and bury us ... ' Policarpo Quaresma - fastidious civil servant, dedicated patriot, self-styled visionary - is a defender of all things Brazilian, full of schemes to improve his beloved homeland. Yet somehow each of his ventures, whether it is petitioning for Brazil's national language to be changed, buying a farm to prove the richness and fertility of the land, or offering support to government forces as they suppress a military revolt - results in ridicule and disaster. Quixotic and hapless, Quaresma's dreams will eventually be his undoing. Funny, despairing, moving and absurd, Lima Barreto's masterpiece shows a man and a country caught in the violent clash between illusion and reality, hope and decline, sanity and madness.

This edited volume is a collection of twelve interdisciplinary essays from various Brazilian literary scholars, historians, and anthropologists analyzing the work of 19th- and 20th-century Afro-Brazilian writer Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto. This is the first collection to present a cohesive analysis of this writer’s work in English. It is an intellectually diverse collection of essays that recover Barreto’s œuvreand consider a wide range of topics, including Barreto’s treatment of race, family, class, social and gender politics of postabolition Brazil, neocolonialism, the disjuncture between urban and suburban spaces, and national identity politics.

Written by a team of international contributors this work contains more than 200 entries on all aspects of literature. It is invaluable for those studying Latin American and/or Caribbean literature and the Spanish/Portuguese languages.

Francis M. Rogers, to whom the current volume is in honor of, may be a modest man in principle, but not in his academic pursuits. To call his interests broad in scope is no exaggeration as they cover the fields of linguistics, literature, philology, bibliography, travel narratives and celestial navigation, which is nicely reflected in this volume. Part I concerns general and Luso-Brazilian linguistics (Bernard H. Bichakjian, John B. Jensen, Anthony J. Naro, Joseph M. Piel, Cléa Rameh); Part II Medieval studies: Sheila R. Ackerlind, Donald Stone Jr., Paolo Valesio, Joan B. Williamson; Part III Luso-Brazilian literature (Memória de Lázaro, Frederick C.H. Garcia, David T. Haberly, Jane M. Malinoff, Noami Hoki Moniz, Maria Luisa Nunes, Noêl W. Ortega, Raymond S. Sayers, Nelson H. Vieira); and Part IV on travel literature (Mary M. Rowan, Charity Cannon Willard). This volume also contains a complete bibliography of the writings of Francis M. Rogers.