Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas: reading paths

Abstract

This article examines the reception of Machado de Assis’s Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas, recovering the various historical and aesthetic meanings that many generations of readers attribute to it. As guidance for this crossing, we will recur to Jauss’s and Iser’s Theories of aesthetic response, highlighting the role of historical reader and the aesthetic effects of a literary work on real reader. While critical reception of Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas points to circumscribed readers in different horizons of expectations, the dialogue established between voices so diverse reaffirms how the place and time of each reading move the multiple meanings raised by this work. Our intention was to understand that the vinculation of a literary work with the historic frame of its production and reception makes clear what this novel, from its original sense, could mean over time or what it means for us today, readers of XXI century.