O Natal, a alquimia, o tempo, e o espírito: ou Um (neo)fantástico conto de Jorge de Sena

That article focuses on the narrative «O urso, a pantufa, o quadro, e o coronel», a tale of Jorge de Sena written in 1961. Faced with a paradoxical narrative that never allows us to conclude on what is dream or what is vigil on the night described by the protagonist, our criticism is obliged to adopt a fragmentary methodology of thought to raise hypotheses of reading for the text. In mirroring the title of the Senian tale that coordinates four elements in its composition, we arrive at a thematic quartet that allows us to go through at least its perimeter: his Christmas productions, Jung’s psychoanalytic studies on alchemy, the ideology of António Ferro in salazarism, and the distension of time in narrative.

O exercício da crítica: «minha prosa mais áspera»

The importance of the plural work of Jorge de Sena (1919-1978) in the field of Portuguese literary criticism. His intense work of critique dedicated to Portuguese-Brazilian cultural, political and literary relations, based on the life experience in the two countries connected by the same language. The concept of culture defined by a threefold requirement: methodical doubt, analytical judgment, synthetic vision along with a method of analysis that consisted of a penetrating interpretive dialectics.

Elogios da razão: Erasmo e a paz incondicional

Erasmus of Rotterdam (circa 1466-1536) was one of the most important figures of the humanistic movement of Europe in the first half of the sixteenth century. In Praise of folly (1511), The war and Complaint of peace (both of 1517), the Dutch author addresses the subject of war, showing armed clashes as absurd, irrational, and making an unconditional defense of the negotiated resolution of conflicts. Frankness, vehemence and, in the case of Praise, humor do not make concessions to the powers of his time. Nobles, priests and intellectuals are equally criticized. By emphatically condemning wars, the writer, translator and theologian occupies a unique place in his time and is the forerunner of modern democracies. The author’s idea of God will also be addressed.

Machado de Assis: um século de traduções francesas

A century was needed to awake the interest of the French reader by Machado de Assis. The status of the Portuguese language, the editorial politics, and the lack of translators, literary critics and publishing houses are some of the reasons. However, during the 20th century, four key moments arise accompanying the geo-political context, commemorative dates, the efforts of mediators and a change on Brazil’s image. We highlight the years 1910, 1930, 1950, and the 80s, when a new phase is born which culminates today with the «suíte machadiana» pocket book.

La retórica en internet: análisis de la persuación en los entornos virtuales

Interest in the rhetorical aspects of the Internet is still not significant in academia. The present study intends to show how the Internet is, in fact, a cultural artefact and a medium in which a pertinent rhetorical discourse can be elaborated. Therefore, we seek to analyse and present what would be the elements or aspects that every web space should implement and how the (multimedia) discourse manages to persuade visitors of the importance of their content and manages to maintain them as permanent users.

Global Middle Ages ou as virtudes do anacronismo. A lição do texto medieval

Has the Middle Ages invented globalization or revealed a clear consciousness of globality? On the other hand, may this anachronistic notion prove to be an appropriate and productive operative and analytical concept for rethinking medieval literature beyond its territorial and linguistic boundaries and the epistemological view of the world imposed by a (neo)positivist conception of the history of literature? Mapping the medieval literature in a global perspective implies a methodological repositioning and a process of deterritorialization of the concepts themselves that leads us to reinvest motives, forms, structuring notions (from the chivalric queste to the concept of romance as translatio, passing through the status of the marvelous) with new meanings and, consequently, new cultural and poetic implications.

A religião nas narrativas utópicas

Thomas More’s Utopia and the subsequent literary creations that belong to the same literary genre represent the affirmation of human initiative and its exclusive responsibility for the laws that rule the destiny of the City. This political autarchy points at an organisation of the society, so zealous of autonomy, that it seems to exclude from itself any divinity or religion. This is not, however, what we see in most of the utopic narratives, starting with the one by More that deals extensively with the religious issue. What statute and significance does religion have in the utopias? The answer can be attempted at three principal levels, which correspond to the same amount of ways of presence and articulation of the religious element in the described societies. There is, firstly, the consecration of Christianism as supreme religion in More’s Utopia. However, this consecration does not prevent the dimension of social criticism, characteristic of the utopic imagination, from applying also to the religious phenomenon. We have, then, the Christian reference to narratives in which the Christianism of origins appears as inspiration and model. Let us remember, for example, the «New Christianism» by Saint-Simon. Lastly, in the last two centuries, the horizon of Christianism tends to dissipate itself in narratives that advocate the implantation of a new social ethics. In this communication, we deal solely with the «Utopias of the Renaissance», the utopias of Thomas More, Tommaso Campanella and Francis Bacon.

As traduções d´Os Lusíadas na Polónia ou a revisitação de Camões entre «os Sármatas» e «os Polónios» (questões históricas, culturais e sócio-políticas)

The epic poem Os Lusíadas (1572), by Luís Vaz de Camões, generated copies, imitations and translations, in between them the first Polish translation: Luzyada by Jacek Idzi Przybylski (Craccow, 1790). The poem has the power of to raise cultural, social and political questions, becoming the starting point for various theses in different epochs. The work of Camões is a pretext for a meditation about Poland’s past in the epoch of Romanticism and today. Camões invites us for an imaginary journey to the Christian rampart of the East, telling not only what had happened in the epoch of the Discoveries, but also what might have happened in the Easter Europe cultural space open for an imaginary journey coursing various methodological perspectives: history, literature, literary criticism, history of ideas and traductology.

Receção das literaturas de língua portuguesa na Sérvia

This paper aims to explain the reception of literatures in Portuguese language in the Serbian cultural space. Firstly, I will study the relations between Portugal and Serbia from historical and diplomatic perspectives, and afterwards I will focus on the teaching of the Portuguese language and culture in the former Yugoslavia, highlighting the translation activity in the process of approaching the Lusophone and Slavic worlds, namely Serbian world. One of the topics to be analyzed are the stereotypes about Portugal in Serbia, before and after contact with literature, concluding that the path of cultural cooperation in the Iberian and Slavic languages — is open, but always with new perspectives to explore.

Mia Couto: Memória e «tradução cultural» em O último voo do flamingo

My reading follows the challenge the reader is confronted with, as a sort of enigma, at the beginning of the novel: «did the [UN] soldiers die? Were they killed?». Looking for an answer, it ponders those issues of life and death posed by the fictive world of Tizangara. Those concepts are understood by taking into account not only Walter Benjamin’s positions, in his Critique of Violence, but also the thoughts of both Emmanuel Lévinas and Jacques Derrida. They are helpfull to grasp what is at stake, from the vantage point of an ethical and political critique of violence, not only for father Muhando — the character that is the organizing principle of the entire plot, and whose vision seems to be heavily influenced by judaism — but also for key-characters such as the wizard Zeca Andorinho and the old Sulplício being, both belonging to the circle of those that are closer to him.