The eighteenth-century Portuguese novel foundations

Author(s)

Moizeis Sobreira de Sousa

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2014-06-02

Examining board members

Paulo Fernando da Motta de Oliveira; Márcia Azevedo de Abreu; Carlos Eduardo Soares da Cruz; Fabio Mario da Silva; Rejane Vecchia da Rocha e Silva

• Advisor: Paulo Fernando da Motta de Oliveira

Abstract

The novel has been passed by and indelibly marked by the sign of instability, which is an aspect that extends from its theoretical frame to the begetting and manifestation of this aesthetic form. Despite this moving complexion, literary and historiographic criticisms have established the misconception of totalizing the realist novel as a finished model, more specifically the production set in France and England between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Taking into account the Portuguese cultural scenery, this generalist approach has generated numerous biases, since the story of the novel does not take place on the west side of the Iberian Peninsula as in England, where the rise of social structures based on individualism, industrial capitalism and the Protestant ethic resonate in how fictional forms are forged. Nor unfolds as seen in France, where historical processes resulting from the French Revolution consolidate the shading of the Ancien Régime and underpin the foundations of a cultural matrix grounded in the bourgeois-liberal worldview. The use of this generalist approach makes it impossible to consider the specific issues and elements the novel acquires during the elaboration of its aesthetic contingencies which were inherent in the Lusitanian cultural process space. Moreover, as a result it ignores the Portuguese romancistic production of the eighteenth century, presupposed as non-existent, since the model does not match the generalist model. This idea, however, proves to be unfounded. Not only are there Portuguese novelists in this period, as they exert influences on fellow writers who deal in this way in the nineteenth century. This is evidenced in several novels written by Camilo Castelo Branco, who is responsible for the recovery of several eighteenth-century homeland narratives (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 09/09862-0 - Camilo Castelo Branco and the eighteenth century origins of the portuguese novel
• Grantee: Moizeis Sobreira de Sousa
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate