An unusual trip in the 19th century press

the fantastic and materiality in “A miraculous excursion” by Machado de Assis

Abstract

This article analyzes the short story “Uma excursão milagrosa”, by Machado de Assis, an unusual narrative (Garcia, 2012) originally published in a section dedicated to travel reports in the Jornal das Famílias. By considering the connection between travel and the press in the 19th century, we propose that this text can have its unusual character extended by looking at the materiality of the vehicle, since the original publication medium of a text effectively acts on its reception, either promoting or maintaining an implicit reading (Chartier, 1996). By analyzing both the materiality of the journal and the short story's dialogue with the texts that made up the same travel section — a mixture of fiction and non-fiction — the proposition is that this fantastic narrative generates a disturbance in the narrative order and denaturalizes the medium by testing the limits of that usual periodical travel space.