Revista do Centro de Estudos Portugueses
A Revista do Centro de Estudos Portugueses, criada em 1979, é o mais antigo periódico em atividade da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brasil), estando vinculada desde sua origem ao Centro de Estudos Portugueses. Trata-se de uma publicação semestral, com avaliação de pares, que tem como objetivo fomentar a produção teórica, crítica e ensaística na área de Literatura Portuguesa, dando a oportunidade para que pesquisadores do Brasil e do exterior divulguem suas pesquisas e contribuam para o debate qualificado nesta área de estudos. Destaca-se como um dos raros periódicos brasileiros destinados a difundir a produção acadêmica e a reflexão crítica estritamente sobre a literatura portuguesa. Qualis A4, área de Letras e Linguística, ano base de 2020. Não se cobra nenhuma taxa pela publicação dos artigos.
From “Righteous Tomfoolery” to Problematization
The nature and value of theatre have been the subject of philosophical debate since Antiquity, standing at the center of aesthetic reflections that underpinned crucial developments in the history of aesthetics. Among its earliest critics stands Plato, whose severity toward tragedy stemmed from two main reasons: on the one hand, the portrayal of morally flawed gods and heroes offers poor examples to the audience; on the other, tragedy emotionally unsettles the individual, drawing them away from the rational ideal of inner discipline. Rousseau resumes these criticisms, adding a new point: theatre, contrary to common belief, does not mobilize but rather contributes to inaction and the weakening of communal bonds. In the novel The Fall of an Angel by Camilo Castelo Branco, the protagonist Calisto Elói delivers a critical discourse on theatre that inscribes itself within this tradition, aligning in various aspects with the arguments of Plato and Rousseau. This article explores that discourse on three levels: first, it presents the main arguments advanced by Calisto Elói; second, it compares these arguments with those of Plato, Rousseau, and the epistemological critiques of art developed by the contemporary philosopher Noël Carroll; finally, it shows how Calisto’s discourse, in articulation with the narrative and aesthetic context of Camilo’s novel in which it is delivered, contributes to a deepening of the reflection on the value of theatre–not through an explicit philosophical argumentation, but through specifically artistic and literary means.
Dossiê: Camilo Castelo Branco e a Irrequieta Heterodoxia
Copyright (c) 2025 Daniel Bonomo, Tânia Furtado Moreira
An Anti-Hagiography of “Ancient Virtues”
As virtudes antigas ou A freira que fazia chagas e O frade que fazia reis (1868) is a collection of texts, by Camilo Castelo Branco (1825-1890), which thematizes the frauds and interventions of religious people in the Ancien Régime society, in Portugal. Such a work would be intended to denounce the vices of the past and should encourage reflection on the fantasies, in the midst of Liberalism, that the previous Regime was a model and more moralized. In this work, we are interested in the section A freira que fazia chagas, which describes the farce, discovery and condemnation of Soror Maria da Visitação (1551-?), prioress of the Dominican monastery of Anunciada, in Lisbon. We investigated the structure and possible framing of the literary genre of Camilo’s work, as well as how the narrator seized and interpreted the documentary sources referred to in the text. We verified these issues in dialogue, above all, with the studies of Antonio Augusto Nery (2023) and Eduardo Lourenço (1999).
Copyright (c) 2025 Eduardo Soczek Mendes
This article narrates the journey of translating Camilo Castelo Branco’s A Queda dum Anjo into English, from the first reading to the completed work. It recounts the translator’s initial resistance to Camilo’s intricate allusions and stylistic complexities and how this evolved into an appreciation of the humour, satire, and historical richness embedded in his work. The article examines the linguistic and cultural challenges of bringing a nineteenth-century Portuguese novel to an English-speaking audience and reflects on key translation decisions shaped by the theoretical frameworks of Venuti and Newmark. By exploring the balance between fidelity to Camilo’s style and accessibility for a contemporary English readership, it considers the translator’s role in preserving cultural nuance. Ultimately, the translation seeks to introduce English-speaking readers to Camilo’s distinctive voice and the enduring relevance of his social critique within the Portuguese literary canon.
The Memory of Camilo Castelo Branco in the First Centennial of His Birth
The present paper has resulted from the analysis of documentation kept at the Municipal Library of Sintra, in the institution’s Camilian collection. It is a project of the Camilo Castelo Branco Chair, financed by the Municipality of Sintra, in the Lisbon district. The collection was the result of Rodrigo Simões do Carmo Costa’s (1873-1947) efforts as a collector. This paper was the result of a gathering and selection of historical sources published after the death of the Writer. Its objective is to provide a novel understanding of the first centenary of the birth of Camilo Castelo Branco (1825-1890). The result of our analysis proves that the Portuguese writer was fertile ground for various polemics that sprung from the commemoration of the centenary of his birth. Various personalities argued about the use of and gain to be had from his image, discussions which were most prominent regarding the bookselling market. From the research conducted it is possible to conclude that there were multiple publications about Camilo Castelo Branco during his centenary, some that exposed and rethought the celebration of his memory and its effects on a young Republic that would come to an end in 1926, after having made use of Portugal’s nineteenth century authors as a necessary means of cultural root-laying, in a society molded by a rocky post-war reality, one mirrored in the rocky Camilian celebrations that would take place in 1920’s Portugal.
Copyright (c) 2025 Frederico Benvinda, Soraia Carvalho
Copyright (c) 2025 Fábio Mário da Silva, Paulo Cunha, Renata Soares Junqueira
THE FEMININE AS A LITERARY PROJECT BY ALINE BEI IN PEQUENA COREOGRAFIA DO ADEUS AND O PESO DO PÁSSARO MORTO
This article seeks to analyze the novels O Peso do pássaro morto (2017) and Pequena coreografia do adeus (2021) by brazilian writer Aline Bei, as a literary project that carries out the multifaceted construction of a feminine in the face of the complexity of motherhood, the conflict with the masculine and the dilemmas in re-elaborating the characters' identities. The aspects linked to the feminine and motherhood, which reverberate in their characterizations, are permeated by physical and symbolic violence, resulting in both the fragmentation of the main characters' self and the speeches they speak about their experiences. To this end, it is worth noting how the writer's thematic-formal choices help in the construction of the feminine faces in both novels, through the visuality of linguistic signs, which enhances the interpretative game as we explore their respective experiences.
Dossiê: Mulheres Artistas – do modernismo à contemporaneidade
Copyright (c) 2025 Ellen Mariany da Silva Dias, Letícia Palazzio
An analysis of the poem Canto Eucarístico, by Adélia Prado, according to Carreter and Calderón’s Text Commentary method
This article aims to analyze the poem Canto Eucarístico, written by Brazilian writer Adélia Prado, using Carreter and Calderón’s text commentary method (1975). Since it is a method of analysis and commentary of recognized didactic-pedagogical value, it is understood to be useful both for deepening Adélia's poetry and for its greater dissemination. Consequently, it can contribute to the process of valuing literary production by female authors and, more specifically, to the appreciation of Adélia Prado's work, which deserves, despite her many awards in Brazil and abroad, given its excellence, even broader recognition.
Copyright (c) 2025 André Nemi Conforte, Bianca Pandeló Cerqueira
As Formas de presença da voz feminina nos cordéis de Salete Maria da Silva
This work presents a study of three cordéis by Salete Maria da Silva, Packing girls in times of violence (2001), Women of Cariri: deaths and persecution (2001) and No to trafficking in women for sexual exploitation (2014). The cordelist adopts a pamphleteer tone and her intention is to interact with female interlocutors, aiming to change their attitude and denounce the crimes they have suffered. The narrating voices of the poems have knowledge about ways of defending women and combating violence, waiting for the woman interlocutor to act and reverse the situation. This study will analyze the credibility achieved by the narrating voices of the poems, the presence of parody in the intertexts with popular songs, the rupture of traditional rules of cordel poetry, the use of direct speech in the narratives and the poet's affiliation with a new narrative-expositor- activist model of cordel poetry. It is expected to demonstrate that Salete's poetic project prioritizes the breaking of crystallized behaviors and adherence to the collective struggle against practices and values of dominant social groups.
Copyright (c) 2025 Fabiane Renata Borsato
Normality as permanent suffering in Eliete, by Dulce Maria Cardoso
The purpose of the article is to reflect on the potential of multiple impressions that culminate in new notions learned in a literature that has as its landmark the 25th of April 1974 in Portugal, but already produced in the 21st century. Making it possible to unravel the contexts and definitions of the conceptualization of memory, the perspective of comparative literature is essential, since the theoretical framework proposes dialogue with different areas that continually cross paths. Starting from the book Eliete: a vida normal, by Dulce Maria Cardoso, and in the light of gender studies, we examine the redimensioning caused by the reformulations of reality through the language-product of the feminine dimension in the post-Carnation Revolution. In this context, we seek to highlight the link between the Salazar dictatorship and the norms pertinent to the issue of gender, as well as their maintenance, as symbolic legacies, after almost half a century of redemocratization in Portugal.
Copyright (c) 2025 Roberta Guimarães Franco, Júlia Fonseca Gomes
This paper aims to reflect on the presence of some female artists among the participants in Portuguese Neo-Realism. By reading the movement’s own critical fortune, it will be possible to detect an absence of female names, especially in the literary field, unlike what occurred in the visual arts sector between the 1940s and 1960s. A brief look at some Portuguese literary history textbooks from this period will not be difficult to detect that literature written by women is relegated to minimal space, or is not even mentioned at all. However, certain works, such as those by Judith Navarro, Lília da Fonseca and Maria Archer, attest to the adherence of female writers to the neo-realist aesthetic, whether directly and incisively or indirectly and occasionally. In this sense, bringing to the stage these writers is a way of demonstrating that the exercise of storytelling can be understood as a gesture of resistance in the Portuguese scenario of Salazar’s Estado Novo.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jorge Vicente Valentim
The symbolism of water in the chronicle “Ouçam os ruídos dos jacumãs”, by Eneida de Moraes
This article aims to analyze how the symbolism of water manifests itself to create metaphors in the literary chronicle Ouçam os ruídos dos jacumãs, from the book Cão da madrugada (1954), by Eneida de Moraes (1904-1971). Start from Massaud Moisés (2012) perspective on literary chronicles, which can be a discursive genre focused on lyricism provoked by a real event, stimulating the chronicler's memory. Introduce Gaston Bachelard's (2018) perspective on water, which divides and classifies in a way that attributes different meanings and sensations to the natural element, to analyze how symbolism occurs in the chronicle by Eneida. In the literary chronicle, the life of the riverside caboclo of the Brazilian Amazon and the chronicler's memories involving the river are narrated. Thus, observe that water has meanings beyond its matter, being a means of reproducing the imagination and symbolic of riverside dwellers.
Copyright (c) 2025 Vanessa da Costa Valentim, Állan Sereja dos Santos, Luiz Rodrigo Brandão Pinheiro
ALMEIDA, Djaimilia Pereira de. Ferry. Lisboa: Relógio d’água, 2022.
Marília Garcia has become one of the main names on the contemporary poetry scene. She is the first brazilian woman to win the Oceanos Literature Prize with the book Câmera lenta (2017). In her poetic project, the displacement is one of the main lines of continuity between her artistic practices, even if in a fragmented way. The objective of this work is to recognize the voice of Marília Garcia (Rio de Janeiro, 1979) as an example of the strong and decisive expression of poetry written by women in the portuguese language in recent years, investigating the modes of displacement (as theme and procedure) presented in her published books, respectively: 20 Poemas para seu walkman (2007), Engano geográfico (2012), Um teste de resistores (2014), Câmera Lenta (2017), Parque das Ruínas (2018) and Expedição: nebulosa (2023).
Copyright (c) 2025 Juliana dos Santos Gelmini
The correspondence between António Ferreira and Sá de Miranda
Understood as one of the main genres of ancient poetry, the elegy was widely read and imitated by poets of the 15th and 16th centuries, adopting procedures, themes, and rhythmic structures from other genres and subgenres of prose and lyric poetry written in the vernacular language. In this study, we propose an analysis of the reception of the elegiac genre in 16th-century Portuguese literature, focusing on the writings of the poets António Ferreira and Sá de Miranda, organized in an epistolary correspondence.
Copyright (c) 2025 Gustavo Luiz Nunes Borghi
The political dimension of human corporeality
This article presents an anthropological analysis of the storyline on the classic of literature by José Maria Eça de Queirós (1845-1900), The Crime of Father Amaro (1875), at the same time we review the imaginary of the Portuguese writer. Let us begin by briefly drafting our approach: corporeality, as far as political tool, represents a backbone in the exertion and practices of power, without obviating that modern authority may assume various forms, i.e.: generating knowledge about the body as well as promoting individual self-discipline. In other words, disciplinary and social domain practices can be exerted both coercively and auto regulative. The patriarchal system nests in the criticism of the Portuguese writer who interrogates social reality in his work, reflecting the hostility of a society and ecclesiastical institution in decline that fight for the disciplinary and particularly corporal dominance of women. A political anatomy where a new discourse on sexuality emerges. But whose objective is still to produce docile and useful bodies. Or, what is the same, useful to the extent of its docility. Hence, the foucauldian reading of this work. Women sexual experiences within the context described by Eça de Queirós appear mediated, at first, by a concrete socialization ab initio; by virtue of which a woman is instituted as a passive being; accordingly, daring to subvert the established order or contradicting the imposed social codes would result in discredit and, ultimately, in punishment.
Copyright (c) 2025 Esmeralda Broullón-Acuña
The main objective of this article is to reflect on the interartistic conection between the novel A cidade de Ulisses (2017), by Teolinda Gersão, and the paintings by Maria de Lourdes Ribeiro (Maluda): Lisboa III (1973), Lisboa XXXII (1986), Lisboa XXXIII (1987), Janela XXVIII (1987) and Janela XIX - Lisboa (1981), based on the representation of images of the city of Lisbon. The dialogue envolves theories about the correspondence between literature and the visual arts, more specifically, between the novel and painting. The images revealed through the words of the narrative gain even more visibility through the appreciation of Maluda's urban paintings, provoking significant resonances between the compositions of the two artists. Maluda's geometrical features intensify Teolinda Gersão's literary discourse in A cidade de Ulisses, another novel by the author that is conducive to interartistic dialogue.
Copyright (c) 2025 Karina Frez Cursino, Silvio Renato Jorge
The female perspective on modernity and tradition in Enervadas, by Chrysanthème
This paper analyzes the female characters in the novel Enervadas, written by Chrysanthème, author who reveals a critical and feminist view of modernity and tradition. Through the analysis of the narrative, it is highlighted how Chrysanthème confronts the traditional values that restrict women's freedom and autonomy, exploring the social dynamics to which they were imposed in the early 20th century. The narrative, published in 1922, is set in the context of cultural transition, where modernity is not only a symbol of progress but also a source of tensions and conflicts for women trying to navigate between traditional roles and new social possibilities presented to them. By analyzing the historical context surrounding the narrative, it becomes evident that female citizenship was still nonexistent. As a reader, it is possible to understand that Chrysanthème has a preference for the struggle of women for rights considered essential at that time.
Copyright (c) 2025 Gabriele Maris Pereira Fenerick
This paper aims to investigate the literary hybridization that can be seen in As meninas (2008), a text by Agustina Bessa-Luís about the Portuguese-British painter Paula Rego. We believe that, in the process of writing this book, Bessa-Luís used at least three literary discourses: the essayistic, the biographical and the fictional. The aim here is to investigate this discursive interweaving based on the relationship established by the novelist herself between her text and the various paintings that illustrate the volume, focusing on Agustina's comments on Rego's series A Menina e o Cão (1986). We followed some reading guidelines pointed out by Anamaria Filizola (2000) and Catherine Dumas (2002) with regard to Agustinian biographies, novels and fictional aesthetics, as well as Filizola's (2009) text on the work under analysis here. Thus, we were able to identify that the work in question presents genological hybridization as one of the characteristics that Agustina Bessa-Luís uses in her texts that deal with historical figures, in this sense, the author uses her craft as a novelist to account for the biographical elements of Paula Rego that are, according to herself, suggested in her paintings, which are analyzed essayistically by the writer in order to conceive them in a fictional diegesis of the painter's life.
Copyright (c) 2025 Roberto Xavier de Oliveira
CLÁUDIO, Mário. Diário Incontínuo. Portugal: D. Quixote, 2024.
This paper contributes to the understanding of Camilo Castelo Branco’s work’s significance in Brazil in the first decades of the 20th century. The research shows a large number of references to Camilo’s name and different ways of reading his work simultaneous to the rise of Brazilian modernism. In this context, three aspects stand out: the popular Camilo in Rio de Janeiro theatres; Camilo’s work being especially favoured by philologists; and the controversial Camilo read by the modernists themselves. More than just an episode in the reception of Camilo’s work in Brazil, the discussion of these three aspects, which are complementary to some extent, seeks to revise a simplified opposition between Camilo’s literature and the aesthetic paths of Brazilian modernism as well as to organise a perspective for future studies.
Brazilian reception of Camilo Castelo Branco
Realism and chattiness in the historical novel
This paper is invested in interrogating the scholarly truism that correlates the historical novel to a rhetoric of factuality or a hyperrealist mode. From a cosmopolitan standpoint, we trace narrative reflexivity (which foregrounds texts’ fictionality) in historical novels from four different national traditions: Waverley (1814), by Walter Scott; The Last of the Mohicans (1826), by James Fenimore Cooper; O Guarani (1857), by José de Alencar; and O Judeu (1866), by Camilo Castelo Branco.
Copyright (c) 2025 Thiago Rhys Bezerra Cass
The presence of the female figure in 19th century Portuguese Society is one of the recurring themes in the work of Camilo Castelo Branco, which provides material for countless studies that try to understand the camillian thought about women. This article intends to reflect on how camillian works presents an overview of the role of the female figure, now defying and resisting the power structures of a system dominated by patriarchy, now accommodating and submitting to violence and the imperatives of the society. When portraying women, Camilo Castelo Branco presents characters that reveal an increasing complexity throughout his work where these women’s actions, which alternate between accommodation and resistance, gain place and visibility. For such an analysis, the contributions of Michael Foucault (1988, 2006), Michelle Perrot (1998), Maria Rita Kehl (2016) and Jean Anyon (1990) will be fundamentally important.
By reading Coração, cabeça e estômago [Heart, head and stomach], we propose to look at how Camilo Castelo Branco adopts medical, philosophical and literary approaches to melancholy. We will see how this condition, which goes back to the core of human self-affection, appears in various texts by Camilo, not just as a physiological observation of melancholy, thereby reduced to its pathic dimension, but as the support of a satirical and critical position, anticipating literary themes from the second half of the 19th century. Camilo’s melancholic observation is dependent on a frugal realism in expression that is only possible in a threshold position capable of reading the limits of the human comedy – vulnerability, suffering and death – in the light of the asymmetries and divides that mark his time. The heartbreak that is so often inseparable from the tentacular calculus of the alliances is counterpointed by a schematic resignation and self-indulgence, the consistency of which reveals its basis in Camilo’s traumatic experience. Bearing in mind the novelist’s temperament, as indicated in various biographical texts and in the accounts of contemporaries, the way in which his adoption of a melancholic outlook becomes concrete in a poetics of affect is highlighted.
Copyright (c) 2025 Cláudio Alexandre S. Carvalho
GERSÃO, Teolinda. Autobiografia não escrita de Martha Freud. Portugal: Porto Editora, 2024.
Autobiografia não escrita de Martha Freud é o mais recente livro publicado por Teolinda Gersão, em 2024. Esta é uma narrativa muito propícia para pensar a relação do romance híbrido, não histórico, conforme ressalta a autora, haja vista que recorre a documentos reais, mais particularmente das cartas trocadas entre Sigmund Freud e sua futura esposa Martha Bernays, durante o noivado, entre 1882 e 1886, mas também em cartas que Freud escreveu a outros. Romance híbrido, porque detém em si, o romance histórico (narrativa que se baseia em fatos históricos) e a escrita de si (o autor se identifica como o narrador, escrita confessional e olhar para as coisas que nos cercam).
Autobiografia não escrita de Martha Freud
Copyright (c) 2025 Rodrigo Felipe Veloso
Reflections on Europa, the monthly magazine directed and edited by Judith Teixeira
Europe. A monthly magazine, directed and edited by Judith Teixeira, marks a turning point in the author's modernist approach. This analysis aims to examine in detail the only three printed issues, focusing on themes and authorship, in an attempt to speculate on a set of texts that may have been written by the author and were hidden under anonymity or pseudonym. In other words, the goal is to reveal that Judith Teixeira believed the innovative content (modernist and avant-garde) of Europe would reflect the desires of this new Portuguese and European society, within a context of turmoil experienced at the time in both Portugal and Europe.
This article begins by briefly analyzing Camilo Castelo Branco’s first novel, Anátema, published in 1851, seeking to show how it already contains an attempt to combine two strands: the use of themes and narrative techniques common in French novels, which were widely read in Portugal at the time, with specific characteristics of Portuguese culture. Then, after a brief reference to his novels published in 1854 and 1855, the focus is on the diptych Onde está a felicidade? and Um homem de brios, both published in 1856. The text seeks to show how, in these two novels, Camilo consolidates the tendencies previously mentioned, thus becoming, for about 20 years, the most important novelist in his country.
Copyright (c) 2025 Paulo Motta Oliveira
Criticism of Justice and Prison System Through Some Female Characters in Memórias do Cárcere, by Camilo Castelo Branco
This paper develops the reading of some chapters of Memórias do cárcere (1862), by Camilo Castelo Branco, based on the analysis of some of the female characters portrayed in the context of the Portuguese justice and prison system of the 19th century, in order to reflect on the social criticism developed by the narrator/author. For this, among other critical texts, the research of Andreia Alves Monteiro de Castro, Crimes, realities and fictions: the representation of the criminal in literature and in the 19th century press (2021), of Maria Cristina Pais Simon, “Female criminality in Portugal in the second half of the 19th century: survey and Camilian illustrations” (2023), and of Ana Ribeiro, “Evil in the feminine in Memórias do cárcere” (2016) were used, in addition to studies on the Portuguese historical and social context in the 19th century. Thus, it was observed that there was a recurrence of disproportionality in the treatment given to characters from lower social classes, especially women, who are victims of moral prejudices, denounced by the narrator/author through his comments throughout the narrative. Finally, some observations will be made about the current Brazilian reality, shown by data from the 17th Brazilian Public Security Yearbook (2023), which presents similarities with the Portuguese prison conditions of that time.
Copyright (c) 2025 Luciene Marie Pavanelo, Camili Alves Quatroqui
THE POETICS OF THE IMPLACABLE OR READING TERCETO PARA O FIM DOS TEMPOS BY MARIA LÚCIA DAL FARRA
Terceto para o fim dos tempos (2017), by Maria Lúcia Dal Farra, includes, in the three parts that compose it, a set of poetic images rooted in memory, childhood, as well as in intertextual dialogues with other artists. It is a book that decants human fragility in the face of loss and chaos. Therefore, the objective of this article is to analyze what we call the Poetics of the Implacable within this work, given the difficult and atrocious themes that the book brings. To this end, the discussions by Paz (1982), Pound (1995), Bergson (1999), Perloff (2013), Chevalier & Gheerbrant (2020) and Sacramento (2021) contribute to the forwarding of this reading.
Copyright (c) 2024 Revista do Centro de Estudos Portugueses