The visible hand of the invisible publisher: fictionalization of the book edition by Machado de Assis' narrative

• Grant number: 21/00642-9
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): June 01, 2021
• Effective date (End): March 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Brazilian Literature
• Principal researcher: Lucia Granja
• Grantee: Guilherme de Souza Lopes
• Home Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project will be developed in connection with APR/FAPESP, "Machado de Assis: written pages and editorial papers", process: 2020/03648-5. Some studies have indicated the presence of the fictional editor in "Memorial de Aires", by Machado de Assis, serving as a starting point for an autobibliographical analysis (BAPTISTA, 2005) of the effects that the subtle participation of this figure, in tension with the narrator and the author, cause for a reading of the work. This master's research project will continue the preliminary investigations (started in a Scientific Initiation supported by PIBIC-CNPq) about the critical problem that is defined and expanded from the special mention to the fictional editor present in Machado's short stories and novels, but this time, exploring this issue from the theoretical perspective of Cultural History and modern narratology. Today, it is known through material evidence and historical investigations about Machado de Assis's artistic trajectory that Assis developed close relations with the editorial process throughout his life (Granja, 2018), as well as fictionalized the editorial practice, more or less clearly, in his novels (Esaú and Jacó and Memorial de Aires are the most notable cases) and in his vast production of short stories, which often uses the artifice of the "Manuscript Found". From this field of possible contaminations and projections between Machado editor-author and his fictional-editorial figuration, we will analyze a wide survey involving all his short stories and the novel Esaú e Jacó (in whose Warning, the complex game of fictionalization of the figure of editor appears, again through the artifice of the "Manuscript Found"). The objective is to describe the constitution of these fictionalization narrative processes, as well as their consequences and contributions to the formulation of a reading about Machado's work and its intersections with the History of the Book and Edition in Brazil and in the West. (AU)