Machado de Assis e o exercício dos gêneros da intimidade

Abstract

Observing the growing interest in writing the word I and taking into consideration Jorge de Sena s quote in the essay Machado de Assis e o seu quinteto carioca , which declares that there are, as a unit among the five final works of Machado de Assis, the questionings of the genres that express the modern subjectivity, it s investigated, in this dissertation, the way in which Machado de Assis deals with some of those intimacy genres, inside and outside the fictional space. For this purpose, two of the final projects were selected, which express more directly the writing of I and that, in the same way, transgress this writing: Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas, an autobiography written by a dead author ; and Memorial de Aires, a diary that frequently registers the lives of others than Aires own life. Besides the fictional works, it s brought to analysis Machado s letters, observing how the writer builds up the image of himself when exchanging letters with the scholars of his familiarity. Reflecting on the exercise of those intimacy genres, by Machado de Assis, it s possible to observe that the one, in its correspondence, hasn t exceeded the boundaries that, in that epoch, reacted to the exchange of confidence between relatives and friends. Moderate and mild, he assumes, in a general way, the role of a master and an advisor, showing through his letters a literary project of pedagogical nature, leading the Youngers towards literature. In fiction, when making a creative use of autobiography and diary rhetoric, the writer used such genres for, at the same time, recovering and accentuating the corrosive criticism to the society of his time