Erotic writing in Machado de Assis

Abstract

This article analyzes Machado de Assis’ tales, focusing on the mystery of the female characters, who appear to the male figures as enigmatic, once men are incapable of comprehending their soul oscillations. The approach is also on Machado’s process of textual creation, which is hidden in ambiguities and euphemisms, what permits to understand it as an erotic writing transgressing in hipo, that is, the narrative elements that are subordinated to suggestion, prioritizing the insinuated transgression, in which the implicit engenders polysemous interpretative possibilities, of which “Missa do galo”, by its gap structure that permeates the tale, is instituted as a paradigmatic example.