Autor, narrador, personagem : as várias facetas dos Aires de Machado

Abstract

The last two novels by Machado de Assis – Esau and Jacob (1904) and Conselour Aires’s Memoirs (1908) – show a special labor dedicated to the fictional strategies of the authorship’s constitution. The authorial plays start being elaborated in the advertences of each text, and spread throughout the novels, coming to light through the relationship between the various narrative instances, which contribute to the composition of an authorial figure. This figure, constituted in a peculiar way in each work, also has intriguing outlines, if it is seen through an analysis that focuses on the relationship between the two novels. It is intended, here, to understand how the idea of authorship in these works establishes a dialog with the conceptions of subject that settle at that time; in parallel with such dialog, it is observed in these novels a retake of the philosophical and literary tradition from the 17th century, evoking a reflection about its presence in the end of the 19th century. Such analysis leads us to identify certain similarity with the conceptions of author and subject that bases what is currently known as “autofiction”, allowing us to conclude that the actual thought acquires great benefits when it plunges towards these works composed by the beginning of the 20th century.