Aqueles Que por Obras Valerosas/ Se Vão da Lei da Morte Libertando": Names, Knowledge and Power in Portuguese Literature from the Renaissance to Saramago (original) (raw)
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There has been substantial work done interpreting the descriptive texts from the early-modern encounters of Portuguese colonizers in Brazil. The interpretations have had major difficulty with significant elements of the texts, which the interpreters found strange from the perspective of their particular contexts. For the most part, they dismiss these elements. It is suggested here that these elements are evidence of a specific style of thinking for coming to terms with nature in the New World. The point is not that the corpus in question can be reduced to this style of thinking. There might be other styles to be identified in the corpus. But this style of thinking gives shape to the corpus to a considerable measure. Moreover, it enables one to make sense of the most strange and puzzling passages of the corpus, such as the following one, describing a " water tree " supposedly found at the time in Bahia: " in its branches it has holes of the length of an arm, which are full of water… the origin of which is unknown… and it happens that 100 souls come to it, and they are all protected, [being able to] drink and wash everything they want, and there is never water shortage " (Cardim, 1925: 67)...
Luso-Brazilian Encounters of the Sixteenth Century: A Style of Thinking Approach
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011
As it happens with other early-Modern corpora, the descriptive texts from sixteenth-century encounters of the Portuguese colonizers in Brazil are well-known for their strangeness. In them we find references to entities like monsters and demons, bizarre descriptions, and odd classification systems of plants and animals. Modern scholars usually dismiss these elements as mere eccentricities. Instead, this book takes these elements seriously. They are focused on and tackled with a theoretical tool—styles of thinking— developed in the fields of philosophy and history of science. By doing so the book aims to unveil epistemological and ontological issues in which colonial and post-colonial studies are entangled, and which have a relevance that goes beyond debates concerning, for instance, the formation of Brazil’s cultural identity. This book contributes to Luso-Brazilian studies, science studies, and the history of the early-modern period. The notion of “styles of thinking” as presented and used in it benefitted from the many discussions about philosophy and history of science that emerged since the 1980s, with authors such as Ian Hacking, Lorraine Daston, and Peter Galison, who have already done much reassessing critically what is best in the work of previous authors such as Paul Feyerabend, Thomas Kuhn, and Michel Foucault. This book considers that the well-known puzzling passages of the corpus of the Portuguese have a fictional and figurative character that acquires full intelligibility in view of literary and mystical traditions typical of the late Renaissance, and influential over the Portuguese. Nature is understood as emerging from an excessive source which permanently overflows it and which is impossible to refer to and depict literally. The book points to the fact that such an idea would connect the Portuguese with other peculiar pre-Modern and post-Modern authors with similar ontological insights: from the neo-Platonists to Boccaccio, Nietzsche, and more recently, Derrida.
Ontological Excess and Metonymy in Early Modern Brazil: Narratives of the Implausible
Scripta Uniandrade, 2017
This paper relies on and furthers a hypothesis advanced in previous research: that the well-known eccentricities to be found in the early-modern corpus of the Portuguese colonizers of Brazil — its references to entities like monsters and demons, its bizarre descriptions, and odd classification systems — can be explained in view of a certain style of thinking, addressing a specific ontological concern. Ontology emerges here as a structural differentiating factor between radically distinct kinds of approach to reality, and the notions of excess and metonymy helps us to characterize the specificity of a cognitive enterprise which, in its several manifestations, is rather literary-religious than scientific-empirical. Our perspective is critical and theoretical, grounded on both perennial and contemporary discussions such as renaissance Christian Neoplatonism and poststructuralist thinking. And it covers significantly visual culture, which helps us to present Brazilian colonial literature on a broad canvas.
Literary Histories in Portuguese
A collection of innovative essays providing a theoretical reflection on the problem of literary history in the Lusophone world In the last few decades, the discipline of literary history has been the subject of intense discussion: from David Perkins’s provocative question, Is Literary History Possible?, to the debates generated by the volume of essays, published by Harvard University Press, dedicated to the writing of innovative national literary histories. This latest volume ofPortuguese Literary & Cultural Studies reflects on the problem of literary history in the Lusophone world with emphasis on theories of literary history and literary history and empire. In addition to this thematic focus, this special issue features sections dedicated to critical essays, reviews, and fiction. Contributors to this volume include Remo Ceserani, José Luís Jobim, Paulo Moreira, and Carola Saavedra.
A Man Without a Name: O Banqueiro Anarchista and the Impossibility of Language
Pessoa Plural―A Journal of Fernando Pessoa Studies, 2014
Pessoa Plural―A Journal of Fernando Pessoa Studies, 2014 LÓPEZ, Nicolás Barbosa, "A Man Without a Name: O Banqueiro Anarchista and the Impossibility of Language" (2014). Pessoa Plural―A Journal of Fernando Pessoa Studies, No. 5, Spring, pp. 27-42. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0513WPT Is Part of: Pessoa Plural―A Journal of Fernando Pessoa Studies, Issue 5 A Man Without a Name: O Banqueiro Anarchista and the Impossibility of Language [Um homem sem nome: O Banqueiro Anarchista e a impossibilidade da linguagem] https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0513WPT ABSTRACT Duality is a crosswise theme found throughout O Banqueiro Anarchista, story written by Fernando Pessoa in 1922. This article aims at revisiting what previous scholars have analyzed about the narration's paradox and oxymoron while proposing that not only is the topic of anarchism and finance the main expression of duality, but also the characters themselves, the plot, the setting, and, above all, the linguistic structures used throughout the story. The article will analyze how the protagonist, with his rhetoric and his manipulation of logic, stands as a humanized metaphor of language and linguistic phenomena, simultaneously destroying and building a new lexical universe. RESUMO A dualidade é uma temática transversal achada em O Banqueiro Anarquista, história escrita por Fernando Pessoa em 1922. Este artigo tem por objetivo revisar o que os estudiosos anteriores analisaram sobre o paradoxo e a contradição da narração para propor que não só é o tema do anarquismo e as finanças a expressão principal da dualidade, mas, também os personagens, o argumento, o cenário, e, sobretudo, as estruturas linguísticas utilizadas ao longo da história. O artigo irá analisar a forma como o protagonista, com sua retórica e sua manipulação da lógica, se destaca como uma metáfora humanizada da linguagem e dos fenômenos lingüísticos, simultaneamente destruindo e construindo um novo universo lexical. BIBLIOGRAPHY BALTRUSCH, Burghard (2010). “O Banqueiro Anarquista e a construção heteronímica de Fernando Pessoa: uma proposta de reavaliação”, in Lusorama, n.º 81-82, pp. 39-66. JACKSON, K. David (2006). “The Adventure of the Anarchist Banker: ‘Reductio ad absurdum’ of a Neo-Liberal”, in Portuguese Studies, vol. 22, n.º 2, pp. 209-218. JARAMILLO, Eduardo (2004). “4 años a bordo de mí mismo: una poética de los cinco sentidos”, in Biblioteca Virtual Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango. See: http://www.banrepcultural.org/blaavirtual/historia/ensayo/cuatro.htm PESSOA, Fernando (2013). El banquero anarquista y una entrevista sensacional. Edición bilingüe y traducción de Nicolás Barbosa López. Medellín: Tragaluz. Colección Lusitania, n.º 2. ____ (2010). Livro do Desasosego. Edição de Jerónimo Pizarro. Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda. Edição crítica de Fernando Pessoa, vol. 10 (2 tomos). ____ (1990). Poemas de Álvaro de Campos. Edição de Cleonice Berardinelli. Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda. Edição crítica de Fernando Pessoa, vol. 2. ____ (1966). Páginas Íntimas e de Auto-Interpretação. Textos estabelecidos e prefaciados por Georg Rudolf Lind e Jacinto do Prado Coelho. Lisboa: Ática. PIZARRO, Jerónimo; FERRARI Patricio; CARDIELLO, Antonio (2010). A Biblioteca Particular de Fernando Pessoa / Fernando Pessoa’s Private Library. Lisboa: D. Quixote. Vol. 1. SAPEGA, Ellen (1989). “On Logical Contradictions and Contradictory Logic: Fernando Pessoa’s O Banqueiro Anarquista”, in Luso-Brazilian Review, vol. 26, n.º 1, pp. 111-118.
Contributions of World Literatures in Portuguese to the Academic Field (by Helena Buescu)
Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures, 2024
As one considers the concept of comparative world literature, one may ponder on how widening the perspective from an all-English area of studies to other languages promotes different worldviews and descriptions of the status quo. In this article, we take into consideration the perspective of literature written in Portuguese, be it European, Brazilian, African of even Asian, in order to demonstrate how rich such other points of view are for the discipline. We also engage the concept of defamiliarization (ostranenie), proposed by Russian Formalist, Viktor Shklovsky, as a central tool to consider cosmopolitanism and the dialogue between different literatures.