Leitura dos primeiros contos de Machado de Assis no Jornal das Famílias

Abstract

The tradition of critical studies of Machado de Assis’ work put aside his f breaking his trajetory in two phases and valuing positively only the one called “maturity phase”. The objects of this study are the author’s inicial short-stories and his critics of that time, in order to verify their organicity in relation to his work as a whole (“Frei Simão”, “Virginius, narrativa de um advogado” and “Casada e viúva”, published in 1864; “Questão de vaidade”, published from 1864 to 1865, and “Confissões de uma viúva moça”, published in 1865). The texts will be consulted in their primary source, Jornal das Famílias, the magazine which had weekly publications from 1863 to 1878. In spite of being considered prolix and romanticized, the purpose is to observe the author’s short-stories beyond what have been already stated. Therefore, the present reading will consider the author’s condition as a shortstory teller, the magazine in which the short-stories are, the relation of the texts with the people reading level at that time, the influence of the literary movements, the audience prefigured by the magazine edition and, at last, from the analysis of Machado de Assis’ critical production, read the short-stories as a way to concretization of a feasible literary project genuinely “machadiano”. Umberto Eco’s concepts of “model-author” and “modelreader” will guide the analysis of the first short-stories, in order to understand the author’s intentions from the narrative strategies presents in the texts.