Literary authorship: theoretical references and material sources

Abstract

Great changes marked literary production in the 19th century, such as the developments of the Industrial Revolution, the consolidation of the book market and the development, initially in England, of copyright laws. Since then, different notions and perceptions about literary authorship have been developed and proposed not only legally, but also by literary theory and criticism, by historiography and philosophy. Unfortunately, the quantity of bibliographical resources on literary authorship in Brazil is limited. Those changes that occurred in the notions of authority, responsibility and in the roles played by authors in the construction and dissemination of their works, can also be verified in the different strategies adopted by great literary figures. They can be verified whether due to the establishment of their names, or for the production of different authorial images or fictional characters that played with the idea of author. Taking into account the uniqueness of the place occupied by Machado de Assis in Brazilian literature but, at the same time, the perception of his convergence with certain practices observed in other more or less contemporary foreign writers, such as Walter Scott, in relation to the production of different effects in authorial figuration, there is a need to obtain a broader perspective in relation to the authorial practices of other contemporary editors and renowned writers, often mentioned in Machado de Assis' work, in order to better locate the writer in a broader context. Therefore, this research project aims to carry out a survey and analysis of bibliographic references on literary authorship and its relationship with the materiality of texts and, as well as its unfolding in authorial figures. This research will make use of the Bancroft Library's collection and other UC Berkeley libraries, and will analyze the collections of primary sources by authors from the 18th and 19th century. This will allow exploring as yet unknown layers of Machado de Assis' work. I hope to address these issues under the supervision of Dr. Ian Duncan, current chair on the English Department of The University of California, Berkeley. His guidance will be fundamental, given his experience in the study of authorship in Walter Scott, "a point of origin for the Romantic conception of the author", and considering his recent work on the novelistic genre. (AU)