“Jogo do Bicho”: an analysis of machadian narrative following the game gambling aspects

Abstract

The present article objectives to analyze the story “Jogo do Bicho” from Machado de Assis, under the perspective of the main aspect here referred, the game itself. Thus, it is presented, at a first moment, a study on gambling essence and its characteristics, following, mainly, three of the greatest experts of this topic like Huizinga, Caillois and Gadamer. After, in order to study the imaginary of a literary text, Iser is presented and, later, before the analysis of the pointed story, it is still a try to understand how gambling really works according to Da Matta and Soárez, intending a better understanding of this Machadian text.