Figurations of the Author in the first compilations, collections and anthologies of Machado de Assis’s writings

Abstract

This article explores a chapter in the long and complex process of the constructing and consecrating of Machado de Assis as a literary author – whether through his own actions to constitute himself and be recognized or through the actions of others – by analyzing the first collections of his writings, the one he gathered himself and those of others who survived him, with a focus on the first two collections, both published in 1921: volume 2 of the Estante clássica da Revista de Língua Portuguesa, directed by Laudelino Freire, dedicated to Machado de Assis; and Machado de Assis by Alberto de Oliveira and Jorge Jobim, included in the “Áurea” Collection. Noted in and surrounding the author’s editorial activity is a dubious movement to expand the repertoire of texts attributed to “Machado de Assis” while restricting this very repertoire in order to build and consecrate the writer as an exemplary figure, both linguistically and morally, and to establish a first canon of Machado’s works.