A cartomante: uma tragicomédia machadiana

the fiction of machado de assis is inscribed in a literary tradition in which the concept of tragicomedy plays an important role. the mixture of tragic and comic styles that characterise his most important texts innovates brazilian literature by means of irony and parody to invert the usual meanings of bourgeois representations. in "a cartomante" ["the fortune teller"], camilo, rita and vilela form a triangle, which alludes to the typical romantic plot, extensively used in newspapers publications of the time. using them as material for a literary aesthetics in which tragic style is used to represent comic things and comic is serious, machado gives new and unexpected meanings to the elements of bourgeois melodrama - such as marriage, lovers, adultery and death -, criticising the normality of social patterns of representation of his society.