"Oro y papel son la misma cosa": dinero y ficción en el Brasil de fines del siglo XIX.

This essay studies the cultural consequences that the spread of paper money had in late nineteenth-century Brazil. First, I examine how these tensions are called into question through the analysis of a political scandal that took place in Rio de Janeiro, in 1900, concerning a two thousand reales banknote. Second, I offer a close reading of Machado de Assis' "Anedota pecuniária", a short-story included in Histórias sem data (1884). My goal is to interrogate the relation between paper money and the economy of credit work, and the narrative devices of literary fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]