Sumários
Review Session
13 Dezembro 2016, 10:00 • Helena Carvalhão Buescu
Review of the main content/topics covered during the semester in preparation for the Final Exam.
Gonçalo M. Tavares: Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique - part 2
6 Dezembro 2016, 10:00 • Helena Carvalhão Buescu
Reading and discussion of some excerpts from Tavares' novel ("How Lenz grew and became strong"; "Not forgetting what must not be forgotten"; “Give me one reason not to kill the weak”; “The example of the hunt”; “There is no order in nature”; “Solidity and resistance”).
Main topics: fear; the influence and importance of the father's figure; power and manipulation over life and death; control in small (medicine) and large (politics) scales; the dystopian context; tensional pairs (foundational myths based on the duality between two brothers - the examples of Cain and Abel, Romulus and Remus) and the concept of the doppelgänger; learning through reading and the relevance of the family library; guilt, redemption and religiosity; discontinuity between technological and civilizational progress.
Intertextual relationship with Machiavelli's The Prince and presentation of Tavares as a reflective and ethical author, although minimally directive.