Defunto autor e clerks defunct

Abstract

This article inquires the hypothesis that one of the boldest and radical innovations of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, the author defunct, originated from Machado de Assis’ reading of the English essayist Charles Lamb. In the autobiographical and fictional series Essays of Elia, Lamb invented a character and narrator who presents himself as a clerk defunct. The nominalization of defunct (as in defunct author) and the profiling of Elia as a dying and decaying figure, as well as a deceptive narrator who is constantly playing tricks on the readers, may have inspired Machado in the crafting of Brás Cubas. Moreover, Lamb played out his own death in two other moments of his work. Therefore, in this article, I intend to unravel the threads that link Elia to Brás Cubas with an aim of understanding why Machado excluded Lamb from the “definite” prologue to The Posthumous Memoirs.