The defunct author on Machado de Assis’ correspondence: ethos, rhetoric and fictional narrator

Abstract

This article aims at making a concise exposition of Machado’s correspondence, in order to locate the author’s epistolary writing into a writing practice that is constructed between the development of an authorial figuration that obliterates the representation of the self and an epistolary and romantic rhetorical practice. Through that, we perceive an association between this authorial figuration and the ethospresented in Machado de Assis’ fiction, fact that allows us to establish a relationship between his epistolary and his e fictional writing, and identify, on the correspondence, the existence of a fictional narrator that brings to light the issue of the authorship, which is outlined ad through the idea of a ‘defunct author’.