The Butterfly Man: Machado De Assis, Charles Lamb, and the Personae in British Periodical Essays

Abstract

This article aims to examine the butterfly man persona who roves from topic to topic with seeming inattention, but concealed choice, in Machado de Assis’ series of chronicles “The Week”, in Charles Lamb’s Essays of Elia, and in previous British periodical essayists. The comparison of the periodical writer to a small flying animal has a long history in essay writing and was acknowledged by Machado in his mature years, at a time when he fully mastered the genre of chronicle and had acquired a far-reaching knowledge of British periodical literature. Therefore, in this paper, the butterfly man would stand for a mode of thinking and writing about the ephemerides of everyday life.