Patchwork: Machado, Melville e os retalhos narrativos

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the characters of Bartleby, from the story “Bartleby, the scrivener” by Herman Melville, and Aires, from the novel Conselour Aires’s Memoirs by Machado de Assis, through a philosophical perspective that multiplies the possibilities of fiction conceived traditionally as the opposite of reality. By investigating those literary figures, along with a Deleuzian vocabulary, this paper will think about the limits of a traditional conception of reality and fiction, as well as the self, in order to assert its dynamic and unstable aspect which consequently involves language itself.