O bruxo e o ilusionista: Machado de Assis e seu leitor Woddy Allen

Abstract

This thesis has the intention to investigate the relationship between the narratives of Machado de Assis and Woody Allen, authors from very different ages and cultures. However, by examining the role of irony in the work of both writers has become possible to approach Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas, Machado's novel from 1881, and Stardust Memories, released in 1980 by movie director Woody Allen. The research is divided into three stages. The first chapter analyzes the closeness of the two authors by a common vision about the nature of. And this view is substantiated by a literary tradition of burlesque that breaks the rule of realistic fiction. The second chapter seeks to demonstrate how the non-realistic approach escapes from the moralizing rule of fiction, to value an ethical approach that defines the ethos of the narrative. The irony, therefore, will be the home of the fiction of both authors, who analyzes the world including it's own narrative. And in the third and final chapter examines the relationship of the two fictional works with memory. Memory, constituent element of human identity, it is an independent language and an oppressive force to the narrators memoirists, imposing them the inevitability of time. Thus his fictions would be an endless struggle of man against the certain of death