The anachronic and the verisimilar: aspects of meaning making in Coronica Troiana em Linguajem Purtuguesa

• Grant number: 20/09413-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2021
• End date: December 12, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Other Vernacular Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Adma Fadul Muhana
• Grantee: Matheus Malagueta
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 22/04628-3 - The anachronistic and the verisimilar: an analysis of the Coronica Troiana em Linguajem Purtuguesa in the Codex 298 from the National Library of Portugal, BE.EP.IC

Abstract

This project intends to analyze the meanings of "verisimilute" in Coronica Troiana em Linguajem Purtuguesa, a 16th translation of the book Historia destruction Troiae, from Guido de Coluna, a medieval text that belongs to the "Trojan Cycle", which, for the subsequent centuries, was disqualified as improbable, lying and harmful to its readers. With the advent of the Renaissance, the rescue of the Aristotelian notions in the humanities will influence fundamentally the way of the literary making and will neglect the cultural productions of the so-called Middle Age. Starting with reading the most popular poetic and rhetorical texts in the Iberian Peninsula from the 12th to the 14th century - such as Rhetoric to Helenium and the Poetic Art from Horace -, and based on studies by historians and literary critics relevant to our topics - such as Curtius, Duby, LeGoff, Murphy, Panofsky, and Saxl -, we will analyze the so-called "anachronism" present in Coronica. This anachronism, combined with the "marvelous" element, presents singularities such as the appropriation of characters from the Greco-Latin cultures, who are redesigned and inserted in the Middle Age. By studying anachronism in order to understand the possibilities of "verisimilitude" in the medieval text, we will understand a sophisticated, complex, and rigorous way of literary making, and we will refute the notion that the Trojan chronicles would be improbable texts. (AU)