The authorship in the Machado de Assis novels: unity and dispersion

• Grant number: 21/03057-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): August 01, 2021
• Effective date (End): May 28, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Brazilian Literature
• Principal Investigator: Hélio de Seixas Guimarães
• Grantee: Fernando Borsato dos Santos
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 22/07618-9 - Literary authorship: theoretical references and material sources, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

This project proposes the development of a systematic study of the figurations of authorship in the nine novels by Machado de Assis, that is, of how, in these novels, authorship is represented, dramatized, or problematized, as well as its potential associations with metaphors such as that of paternity and the notions of responsibility, authority, and property. The study will consider the novels in isolation and together and will also take into account advanced issues in the master's thesis "The signatures of Machado de Assis: a study on the figures of authorship", which was supported by FAPESP (Process nº 2018 / 26382-0 ), in which the signatures that the writer used throughout his career were studied. In the dissertation, 87 different signatures used by the writer were identified (among pseudonyms, cryptonyms, initials and variations of his civil name) and different roles played by them in each genre, revealing the need for a careful research of authorship, in principle, in the novel. Faced with these books that operate with the tension between the figures of the author Machado de Assis and fictional authors (such as Brás Cubas, Dom Casmurro, Aires) and considering the developments of authorship in these novels (in different signatures, figures of author, editor, narrator and characters that thematize or dramatize authorship - its social insertion, powers and impotences), it is proposed to expand the debate on the multiplication and unfolding of author figures, which should consider the collection of novels by Machado de Assis and analyze its effects in the construction of meaning and its participation in the formation of a certain notion of "work" under this author's name. To this end, it is also proposed to consider the legal conditions of production and circulation contemporary to the production of books, and their inscriptions in the writer's texts, as well as aspects of their materiality, important for the construction of the meaning of any text, but especially of novels, where the materiality of the book is themed and fictionalized. (AU)