IN THE EXTRA-LITERARY THRESHOLD: PREFACES, FOREWORDS AND THE AUTOCONSTITUTION OF THE PUBLIC IMAGE BY THE AUTHOR

Abstract

Inquiry about the relations between the paratexts (prefaces, “foreword to the reader” etc.) and the main narrative of French novelists of the XVIIIth century, in a moment of auto-legitimation of the novel as genre. The debates pro and against the novels and the ficcionalization of forewords will be analyzed as signs of a cultural polemic of rise of the novel in modernity. Three Brazilian authors – Machado de Assis, Clarice Lispector and Alberto Mussa – will be analyzed as heirs of these debates, under the aspect of a complex play between paratexts and main narratives, and between admited projects and the auto-constitution of the public image by the author, in a contemporary time of intense midiatic presence. The heritage shows a (theoretical) continuity between the moment of the rise of novels and the ulteriors deployements of a modernity that has maintained the importance of the novel as genre.