Sumários

Gonçalo M. Tavares: Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique - part 1

29 Novembro 2016, 10:00 • Helena Carvalhão Buescu

A dialogue between Tavares' novel and Goethe's Faust as well as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (and also Ridley Scott's movie Prometheus): the idea of knowledge as a means for creation but also as a kind of transgression; apprenticeship and the possibility of overcoming the master's figure; the tension between good knowledge and bad morals.

The importance of the German context: the evil "hero" (reference to Josef Mendele, a German physician in Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II who created more evil to "cure" evil) with a new darwinistic problem (now Man, instead of Nature, wants to keep the strongest and sacrifice the weakest); Kant's concept of the categoric imperative (the sacrifice of one in favor of many denies the nature of humanity) as opposed to Lenz Buchmann's choice; the threshold that the Holocaust has surpassed (to eliminate people without hesitation).
Meaning of the novel's title: a paradox between two worlds combined - a personal, small (kleine), useless and unexplainable one (praying) and a public, big (große), useful and explainable one (technique).

Poets of the 20th century

24 Novembro 2016, 10:00 • Helena Carvalhão Buescu

Reading and discussion of "To Love" by Florbela Espanca; "Standing at Fearful Attention" by Alexandre O'Neill; "Historical Truth" by Ana Luísa Amaral; "The Complete Poetry of Marianne Moore" by José Tolentino Mendonça; "We Will Rise" and "25th April 1974" by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen; "Green God" by Eugénio de Andrade.

Main topics: unconventional, free love (Espanca); fear and dissolution of the individual (O'Neill); the poetic weight of daily life (Amaral); storytelling and transcendence over factuality and utilitarianism (Mendonça); hope against repression (Andresen); a rewriting of a lyrical poem (pastoral tradition) by Camões (Andrade). 

José Saramago: The Centaur

22 Novembro 2016, 10:00 • Helena Carvalhão Buescu

A brief note on José Saramago's biography and political views, as well as on their influence over his fictional work. 

Reading and discussion of the short story "The Centaur":  the unresolvable hybridity and plurality of identity; the change of times and the maladjustment of mythology in civilized societies throughout the centuries (comparison with the idea of "disappearance of the noble hero" (George Steiner) through a textual reference to Cervantes' Don Quixote); notions on historiographic metafiction and the Romantic (19th century) motif of "the last survivor"; fantastic creatures (influence of Magical Realism) as outcasts.

Manuel da Fonseca, "It's company"

17 Novembro 2016, 10:00 • Helena Carvalhão Buescu

The short story as a way of manifesting some of the principles of the ethics of neo-realism: social and political critique; the interdependence between individual and community and the shared construction of the future; the "small", trivial heroes and their possibilities of changing the world. Characterization of the main characters. From isolation to community. From silence as solitude to silence as shared attention. The world comes into the village: social education. The transition from archaic rurality to modernity: the radio.

Vergílio Ferreira: The Hen

15 Novembro 2016, 10:00 • Helena Carvalhão Buescu

Vergílio Ferreira as an existentialist and neorealist writer: the (lack of) meaning of life and the specificities of Portuguese history in the 1970s."The Hen" as a short nonsense story divided in five parts whose development follows a crescendo of violence (from a domestic to a nationwide scale), despite its apparently comic starting point (value of irony).

The irrationality, unresolvability and pointlessness of conflict as a representation for the absurdity of life in general and of the Portuguese Colonial War (1961-1974) in particular.