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| Author(s): |
Ana Carolina Sa Teles
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) |
| Defense date: | 2018-08-17 |
| Examining board members: |
Hélio de Seixas Guimarães;
Jean Pierre Chauvin;
Pedro Meira Monteiro;
Cleusa Rios Pinheiro Passos;
José Luiz Ithamar Passos
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| Advisor: | Hélio de Seixas Guimarães |
| Abstract | |
This dissertation approaches characters composition and characterization in Machado de Assis novels Resurrection (1872), Helena (1876), and Dom Casmurro (1899) by considering characters relational aspects. We map how Machado de Assis perceives characters in his own critics and letters from the 1860s and the 1870s. The writer stresses the issue of characters as he analyzes them by the criteria of Theophrastian characters and of emotions. The Theophrastian character is a rhetorical genre for drawing types. It goes back to Theophrastus (IV BC) and to a network that includes English Theophrastian character books (16th and 17th centuries), La Bruyère (17th century), among others. On one hand, Machado evokes this technique for characters composition and characterization. On the other hand, theres an irony to this stylistic gesture for its chronological misplacement. Moreover, for the eventual contradiction between Theophrastian characters and the picturing of particular emotions. With this tension in mind, I analyze Machadian characters references to Theophrastian characters and to old portraits, as well as the imagination of these figures according to the literary figuration of psychoanalytical processes. Both orientations take part in the composition of Machados characters. In a coherent relation with the writers own critical essays, in the novels here approached characters are connected to their plots and societies. This means that their composition is entangled with their character constellation. We observe that Félix, Estácio, Bento/Santiago/Casmurro/Dom Casmurro constitute the central reference for their respective character constellation in a hierarchical way. Nonetheless, they prove to be fail heroes for their groups. Not only do they act for self-destruction, but also for the annihilation of others. Thus, each character constellation in these three novels Resurrection, Helena, and Dom Casmurro is equally arranged in relation with references to the Brazilian patriarchal family that remains in the eighteenth century, and to the dynamics of jealousy and envy systemized by psychoanalytic theories. By considering the trajectory of Resurrection, Helena, and Dom Casmurro, we have viewed a process of growing complexity in Machadian characters composition and characterization, which is developed from the exploration of key narrative themes and from the literary experimentation concerning character constellations. (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 14/18486-0 - The commonness and the difference: characters in Resurrection, Helena, and Dom Casmurro, novels by Machado de Assis |
| Grantee: | Ana Carolina Sá Teles |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate |