The Machado de Assis\' signatures: a study on figurations of authorship

Author(s)

Fernando Borsato dos Santos

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2021-02-09

Examining board members

Hélio de Seixas Guimarães; Lucia Granja; Joao Adolfo Hansen; Wilton José Marques

• Advisor: Hélio de Seixas Guimarães

Abstract

This dissertation proposes a systematic study of the signatures used by Machado de Assis (or attributed to him) throughout his work, considering \"work\" as all the texts included and acknowledged under his name. The present study identified 87 signatures included under the name of the author, which include variations of his civil name, initials, pseudonyms, and cryptonyms, used in the most diverse genres that he practiced. Here, it turns out that when composing his books around the signature \"Machado de Assis\", printed on the cover of all the volumes he published in life, the writer works incessantly in the unification, affirmation, and institutionalization of his author name and his authorial image. On the other hand, he also works incessantly in destabilizing and refracting this name and image through the proliferation of narrative and authorial instances, and through the variety of forms with which he signed. The boundaries between \"inside\" and \"outside\", \"life\" and \"work\", \"author\" and \"narrator\" are blurred by the competition of signatures and the use of other paratexts, tools that allow the paradox of the junction of this double condition of dispersion and unity. This is perhaps one of the main Machado de Assis\' themes, which come to the fore in problematizing the dispersion and unity of the collections of stories, as is the case with prefaces from Papéis avulsos and Várias histórias, or in the affirmation of an \"inner and unique thought\" to organize such a fragmentary romance as Esaú e Jacó. The double success of carrying out these opposing movements is verified: on the one hand, in the different interpretations and appropriations of his work, of his paratexts, authors, and narrators - sometimes contradicting each other; and, on the other hand, in the symbolic and institutional power of his author name, that engaged generations of literary critics interested in in the name Machado de Assis and the association of them own signatures with the writer\'s signature. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 18/26382-0 - The signatures of Machado de Assis, study on the figurations of authorship
• Grantee: Fernando Borsato dos Santos
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master