Textos em trânsito: Machado de Assis e o projeto literário nacional

Abstract

In this paper we study the intertextuality in Machado de Assis’s work in the context of national literature, problematizing the processes of appropriation and resignification of the texts.For this purpose, we initially show the main topics related to nationality of Brazilian literature that were developed in the 19th century, focusing in the clash between universalistic and local tendencies. Hereinafter, we will discuss the machadiano critical thinking using the essay “Instinto de nacionalidade” (1873), where we highlight Machado’s proposal of a literature that advances from the “local color” towards a consciousness stage in which it is possible to use the relations between works from many different times and places fruitfully. Taking into account that the appropriation and resignification movements occur from the critical positioning of the text we analyzed, in the romance Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (1881), Brás Cubas’s dislocations as a narrated being and as a narrator; a condition that provoke constant repositioning by the reader in the construction of meanings regardig the book. We also analysed the ironic construction in which Brás Cubas articulates the interlacing of dissenting voices in the book. Finally, we discuss the multiplicity of the intertextual processes in Machado’s work, analysing tales that were elaborated from the perspective of inserting themselves in narratives established by tradition: a strategy that allows the redefinition of meanings in the aforementioned text as much as in its recreation, which highlights in Machado’s work a critic and problematizing consciousness of its own time.