Casas em ruínas: Machado, Cardoso, Dourado, Santiago

Abstract

This thesis intends to investigate how the image of the house in ruins – as a metaphor of contemporary literature, which is built with and under the rubble and remains of literary tradition, a warp of the text that takes place through appropriation and rewriting – is presented in the work of Machado de Assis and in the novels Crônica da casa assassinada, by Lúcio Cardoso, Ópera dos mortos, by Autran Dourado, and Machado, by Silviano Santiago. In Machado de Assis, we tried to present a discussion about the collection of shards and fragments that are appropriated by the writer in the construction of his old houses. In Crônica da casa assassinada, Cardoso engenders a narrative that takes place under the sign of death and whose house metaphorically coincides with the decadence of its residents. Ópera dos Mortos, in turn, portrays a degraded space that runs through the family saga of the Honório Cota and, at the same time, weaves the dead ancestors into the house and, by extension, the last descendant of this patriarchal family, Rosalina, culminating in the end of the family line. Finally, in Machado, the writer takes up the figure of the homonymous writer, appropriating the correspondences and the texts by Machado. The notion of ruin thus metaphorically shifts from the old house to the ruined body of Machado, character of the novel, a convulsive body that, as a text, is configured as a space of decay that is evoked by Santiago. In view of this, an attempt was made to outline a reading model whose old houses, as a metaphor, represent a possible profile of contemporary literature, in which texts are built with the remains and traces of other narratives.