Entre Estácios, Jorges, Vicentes e Raymundos: as figurações de masculinidades nos romances Helena e Yayá Garcia, de Machado de Assis

Abstract

This dissertation investigates masculinities in the serial novels Helena and Yayá Garcia, published respectively in 1876 and 1878. The work consists of observing gender relations, the plurality of male figurations and the ways in which these characters refer to values, ideals, qualities and ways of being a man, in force in the nineteenth century in Brazil. In this research, we also address the relationships between the concepts of fiction, literature and history in serial novels. Thus, the hypothesis of a Machadian “watercolor of masculinities” was elaborated, in which it was possible to map each figuration elaborated by the writer, present in these two nineteenth-century literary works.