Temas de Cultura Portuguesa I
The course Themes of Portuguese Culture I offers an in-depth study of José Saramago’s novelistic construction, exploring significant intertextual dialogues and narrative strategies that are revisited and updated throughout his work, in a continuous reflection on his time as much as on the literary tradition to which his creation is linked.
This involves entering the writer’s workshop, analyzing his narrative elaboration — including some of the materials that contribute to it — and, ultimately, understanding how Saramago establishes connections with his predecessors, both in content and form. The course also seeks to articulate narratological concepts with a comparative analysis of different texts and literary genres, fostering research and further study of 20th century Portuguese Culture and Literature.
José Saramago
Intertextuality
Narrative construction
Portuguese Culture and Literature
By the end of this course, doctoral students are expected to have acquired and developed the following general and specific skills:
- Ability to relate literary texts to their contexts of production;
- Ability to establish relevant connections between different authors and literary genres;
- Ability to identify and analyze intertextual dialogues and narrative strategies in the novelistic construction of José Saramago and other contemporary writers;
- Ability to formulate and express ideas with clarity, rigor, and critical reasoning;
- Ability to carry out in-depth research, using the tools acquired throughout the course to write assignments that offer a critical and innovative approach to the topics studied.
José Saramago’s literary production will be the starting point for this course, enabling a productive dialogue with other authors and the study of various literary works and genres, from novels to short stories, poetry and theater.
With a focus on fiction produced in Portugal at different moments of the twentieth century, the syllabus for Themes in Portuguese Culture I is organized around four major themes, which will be explored with the support of selected critical texts and narratological concepts used as heuristic tools:
Blurred boundaries: narrative metalepsis.
NOTE: Only a few mandatory and/or reference readings are listed here. Specific bibliography for each of the modules in the syllabus will be provided during the course.
AGUILERA, Fernando Gómez, José Saramago, a consistência dos sonhos: cronobiografia, trad. António Gonçalves, Lisboa, Caminho, 2008.
BLOOM, Harold, Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: José Saramago, Philadelphia, Chelsea House Publishing, 2005.
COMPAGNON, Antoine, La seconde main ou le travail de la citation, 2. ed., Paris, Seuil, 2016.
DAWSON, Paul; MÄKELÄ, Maria (orgs.), The Routledge Companion to Narrative Theory, New York, Routledge, 2023.
ELIOT, T. S., The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, 2. ed., Londres, Methuen, 1928.
GENETTE, Gérard, Métalepse : de la figure à la fiction, Paris, Seuil, 2004.
HERMAN, David; JAHN, Manfred; RYAN, Marie-Laure (orgs.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, New York, Routledge, 2005.
LAVOCAT, Françoise, Fait et fiction : pour une frontière, Paris, Seuil, 2016.
SARAMAGO, José, Discursos de Estocolmo, Lisboa, Fundação José Saramago, s.d [1998].
SARAMAGO, José, História do cerco de Lisboa, 10. ed., Porto, Porto Editora, 2014 [1989].
SARAMAGO, José, “História e ficção”, Jornal de Letras, Artes e Ideias, Lisboa, ano 10, n. 400, 6 mar. 1990, p. 16-20.
SARAMAGO, José, O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis, 25. ed., Porto, Porto Editora, 2016 [1984].
E-learning.
Assessment is individual and involves two different approaches: continuous assessment (60%) and final assessment (40%). This evaluation will be carried out using various methods defined in the course’s Learning Contract.