Ironía y antiaristocraticismo en dos relatos de José María Cárdenas y Machado de Assis

Abstract

Both Cuba and Brazil were slave-owning, aristocratic, and monarchical societies during the 19th century. In both cases, the traditional aristocracy gradually mixed with the rising oligarchy to constitute the hegemonic sector. The Cuban José María Cardenas, in his story «¡Un título!», and the Brazilian Machado de Assis, in «Teoria do medalhão’’, coincide in their antiaristocraticism and in the use of humor and irony as the main resources to develop their critical discourse.  In both cases a conversation is presented between a senior authority figure, who advises a young man on what he should do to join the dominant sector. However, in Cárdenas’s story the «eiron» or ironist is the adviser, backed by the narrator, while Machado, by completely eliminating the figure of the narrator and limiting himself to pure dialogue makes the counselor the «alazon» or target of irony and turns the implicit author and the reader into ironists.