Helena de Machado de Assis; Imagens literárias e a retórica da morte da nação inconclusa

Helena is the romance of perishable and discontinuous title character denominator of a dialectic that does not consume and build the narrative by sequential fragmentation combined with episodic frame. The novel is a lightning stroke to the romantic literary project. Therefore, this study aims to find "objective" elements of the novel that would constitute a conception of literary nation proposed by Machado de Assis, as in classical writing, where women are engaged as a metaphor for the nation by a non-cultural heroism, as the example of the Greek myth of Helena, where the feminine represents a mythical image of the nation. The paper's theoretical conception of the history of Walter Benjamin, that is, that is constructed as an allegorical appeal, the conclusions about the disciplinary society of nineteenth century of Michel Foucault, the construction of the nation as a subtle game to remember and forget of Wander Miranda and the rhetoric of death and loss reflected in the speeches of the cultural heritage of José Reginaldo Santos Gonçalves, which allow you to analyze the work permeated by subjectivity and existential conflicts by Machado, who has it arranged in dialectic with the avant-garde literary romanticism and realism. In this relationship with the Greek myth of Helen, explained that characters with the nickname of Helena in Machado's work are not uncommon. As in classical Helena, Machado s Helena uses three rhetorical are the cause of the seizure of the nation. In this game of remembering and forgetting, in the daily plebiscite, Machado draw ideal images that forged our mythical past and commitment to the future. The suffering love of Helena is suffering from failure of the nation which would have led the author to the use of allegorical language, seeking a balance in the chaos generated by the opposition between cruelty and pity widespread view in an area where only left the character's confession guilt for the death. It is a simulacrum of unfinished nation, the space for the game of remembering and forgetting, while the rhetoric of negotiation of our Brazilianness