Orientalism in the goan writer Cristóvão Aires short stories

• Grant number: 20/03481-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2020
• End date: July 31, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Other Vernacular Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Helder Garmes
• Grantee: Vitoria Chiovetto
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research focuses on the Goan author Cristóvão Aires, who lived from 1854 until 1930 and was part of the Indianist movement in Goa. The literary analysis proposed here will be made based on his short stories, published between 1890 and 1891. In addition to the aesthetic quality of his narratives, which mix resources from the romantic tradition with the realistic tradition, it is intended to investigate how the concept of orientalism proposed by Edward W. Said in his book Orientalism (1979) can be applied to Aires' work and how much this perspective can reveal about the writer's vision of his native land, Goa, that was a Portuguese colony in India. The contradictions that may emerge from his literary texts, aimed at the public of the Portuguese metropolis (since the writer published and spent most of his professional life in Lisbon), but also in dialogue with his Goan public, are the privileged object of this job.