The fictional, historical and critical metanarrative in Machado, novel by Silviano Santiago

Abstract

This work presents a reading of the novel Machado(2016), by Silviano Santiago, in order to present it as a historical fiction for demonstrating in its textuality discursive connections between Literature and History. The development of this study aims to understand how the intersection between fiction, history and criticism occurs in this novelistic production. The theoretical and critical reflections brought to the study seek to understand both issues that involve contemporary Brazilian historical fiction and the relations of cultural dependence of Latin American literary discourse developed in the fictional, historical and critical metanarrative about Machado de Assis by the narrator-character. In this context, it is essential to think about thesystematizations proposed by György Lukács on the traditional “historical novel”, as well as to understand the novel as a literary genre in constant transformation, as suggested by Mikhail Bakhtin. Therefore, it is necessary to advance on Linda Hutcheon'sproposal regarding “historiographical metafiction”as a poetics for Postmodernism and, finally, to verify how the processes of "cultural hybridizations" occur in the narrative, whose concept was developed by Néstor Garcia Canclini.