“Eu não sou um autor defunto, mas um defunto autor”: a construção do narrador no romance machadiano e no filme de Klotzel

Abstract

In this dissertation we developed a comparative dialogue between the novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, by Machado de Assis, and his film adaptation Posthumous Memoirs (2001), by director and screenwriter André Klotzel, with emphasis on the construction of the narrator in his well-known dubiety. Our research aims at analysing how the filmic adaptation of a literary text from the narrator's point of view can be thought from the process of migration to the new media; and this is focused on the examination of material possibilities and deletions, additions, repetitions pertinent to media transposition, subcategory of Intermidialities in its literary approach (RAJEWSKY, 2012). We consider, therefore, the dynamics of articulation according to the meanings, as well as the autonomy of director and screenwriter to resignify the starting work, since the adaptation consists in the reconfiguration of the textual structures in order to adapt to the other media, with its specific production context. Considering the significant power of the literary textthrough the choices made in the film reinterpretation, the filmmaker had to face the challenge of transpose the complex construction of Machadian’s narrator: a literary project that has revolutionized Brazil's novel modus operandi.