The universal stage of Saramago's novels: the stone age

• Grant number: 09/16379-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: March 01, 2010
• End date: July 31, 2010
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Other Vernacular Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Sandra Aparecida Ferreira
• Grantee: Sandra Aparecida Ferreira
• Host Investigator: Ana Paula dos Santos Duarte Arnaut
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universidade de Coimbra (UC), Portugal

Abstract

Blindness is point out as a watershed in the literary production of Jose Saramago. According to his own words, before Blindness he had dealt with the "statue"; from then on he has set his focus on the "stone". The "statue" should be understood as the adjustment of the dissonances of subjective experiences onto the layers of objective history and circumstantial reality. In Blindness, these dissonances take on these layers and are transformed into the "stone" which is then addressed in his following four novels: All names, The Cave, Essay on Lucidity and The Double. The universal stage of Saramago's novels is seen within this context. The contribution of the research proposed here to the critical fortune of Saramago consists of a circumscriptive interpretation of this universal stage, through the analytic-comparative study of five novels that constitute it. Such study will reveal the presence of an intensely personal narrative diction and constant characteristics in the composition of each of these novels, which can be seen as different manifestations of a unique concern. We intend to analyze how, through the reinterpretation of symbols and myths - such as Amphitryon, the blinding of Oedipus, the search for the Grail, Plato's cave, Democracy, Immortality, among others - Saramago brings forward a revealing reflection on contemporary life, delving into hide-outs to denounce, in terms similar to those of Fuerbach that in our time we prefer the image to the thing, the copy to the original, the representation to reality. This research aims at the apprehension of the narrative mark which articulates the fictional range of the analyzed novels and joins them under a common heading, by indicating what resources are configured by the novelist who, as the waters of Heraclitus, is always another and always remains the same. (AU)