O ROMANCE ENTRE A FICÇÃO DO MANUSCRITO E A FICÇÃO NO LIVRO EM FRONTEIRA (1935), DE CORNÉLIO PENNA

Abstract

This article analyzes the questions raised by the links between the fiction of the manuscript, the novel and the book in Fronteira (1935), the first novel published by Cornélio Penna. Penna uses the topos of the found manuscript, an artifice that sets in motion a fiction of the manuscript as a guarantor of the authenticity of the text, influencing its reading protocol; paradoxically, the fiction of the manuscript is triggered not preliminarily to the reading, but after it, in an “Epilogue”, which short-circuits the reading protocol of the novel. In this sense, just like in the decadent mansion in which the novel is set, the book, somewhat destabilized in its orthopedy, also appears closed “like a safe”, disguising the boundaries between the supposed manuscript (a diary) and the novel that emulates it, between the book that un-houses the novel and the building that un-houses the characters in Cornelian fiction.