Global Impact Of The Portuguese Language

Within the cultural and literary context of contemporary Portugal and Western literature, 1998 was unquestionably the year that Portuguese writing gained international recognition as JosU Saramago became the first Portuguese writer ever to receive the Nobel Prize in literature. Readers who had never thought about Portuguese letters began to consume his books and, most importantly, opted for expanding their reading lists to include other important writers not only from Portugal, but from Portuguese-speaking well beyond the borders of Portugal. Global Impact of the Portuguese Language is a collection of Portuguese writing that is as rich in content and broad in scope as the diversity of its topics and writing modes of its contributors. The book is divided into three major parts. Part 1, "Different Cultural Perspectives of Portuguese Writing," contains thirteen chapters in which the first and opening one, "Portugal: The New Frontier" ably sets the stage for the book by examining from a cultural perspective how Portugal, a peripheral country in the new world system, serves as a microcosm of the problems of cultural intercommunication in today's world. Subsequent chapters are grouped in three categories: "The Voices of the Writers," "Critical Approaches to Cames," and "Fictionalizing the Nation." Part 2, "Portuguese Language and Literature Outside Portugal," comprises one section devoted to the Portuguese language in Africa, followed by studies about Portuguese discoveries as part of the historical process of remembering and forging one's identity, and finally a comprehensive historical development of Portuguese writing, both in Portuguese and English, in the United States. Part 3, "Portuguese Literature and Criticism Available in English: Suggested Readings" details the recent literary happenings which point to a possible renaissance in Portuguese literary production. The concluding part of this volume offers a short, comprehensive listing of anthologies, general studies, and the most popular translations of the best of Portuguese writing from Portugal and Africa. This lively volume constitutes a first pioneering effort to contribute to a deepening appreciation and understanding of Portuguese writing. Anyone interested in ethnic writing will find this book an invaluable education resource with which to begin an exploration of Portuguese writing in the United States. Asela Rodriguez de Laguna is associate professor of Spanish and director of the Hispanic Civilization & Language Studies Program. She is the author of Notes on Puerto Rican Literature: Images and Identities: An Introduction, and editor of Images and Identities: The Puerto Rican in Two World Contexts.

Within the cultural and literary context of contemporary Portugal and Western literature, 1998 was unquestionably the year that Portuguese writing gained international recognition as Jos� Saramago became the first Portuguese writer ever to receive the Nobel Prize in literature. Readers who had never thought about Portuguese letters began to consume his books and, most importantly, opted for expanding their reading lists to include other important writers not only from Portugal, but from Portuguese-speaking well beyond the borders of Portugal. Global Impact of the Portuguese Language is a collection of Portuguese writing that is as rich in content and broad in scope as the diversity of its topics and writing modes of its contributors. The book is divided into three major parts. Part 1, "Different Cultural Perspectives of Portuguese Writing," contains thirteen chapters in which the first and opening one, "Portugal: The New Frontier" ably sets the stage for the book by examining from a cultural perspective how Portugal, a peripheral country in the new world system, serves as a microcosm of the problems of cultural intercommunication in today's world. Subsequent chapters are grouped in three categories: "The Voices of the Writers," "Critical Approaches to Cam�es," and "Fictionalizing the Nation." Part 2, "Portuguese Language and Literature Outside Portugal," comprises one section devoted to the Portuguese language in Africa, followed by studies about Portuguese discoveries as part of the historical process of remembering and forging one's identity, and finally a comprehensive historical development of Portuguese writing, both in Portuguese and English, in the United States. Part 3, "Portuguese Literature and Criticism Available in English: Suggested Readings" details the recent literary happenings which point to a possible renaissance in Portuguese literary production. The concluding part of this volume offers a short, comprehensive listing of anthologies, general studies, and the most popular translations of the best of Portuguese writing from Portugal and Africa. This lively volume constitutes a first pioneering effort to contribute to a deepening appreciation and understanding of Portuguese writing. Anyone interested in ethnic writing will find this book an invaluable education resource with which to begin an exploration of Portuguese writing in the United States. Asela Rodriguez de Laguna is associate professor of Spanish and director of the Hispanic Civilization & Language Studies Program. She is the author of Notes on Puerto Rican Literature: Images and Identities: An Introduction, and editor of Images and Identities: The Puerto Rican in Two World Contexts.

"Within the cultural and literary context of contemporary Portugal and Western literature, 1998 was unquestionably the year that Portuguese writing gained international recognition as JosU Saramago became the first Portuguese writer ever to receive the Nobel Prize in literature. Readers who had never thought about Portuguese letters began to consume his books and, most importantly, opted for expanding their reading lists to include other important writers not only from Portugal, but from Portuguese-speaking well beyond the borders of Portugal. Global Impact of the Portuguese Language is a collection of Portuguese writing that is as rich in content and broad in scope as the diversity of its topics and writing modes of its contributors. The book is divided into three major parts. Part 1, "Different Cultural Perspectives of Portuguese Writing," contains thirteen chapters in which the first and opening one, "Portugal: The New Frontier" ably sets the stage for the book by examining from a cultural perspective how Portugal, a peripheral country in the new world system, serves as a microcosm of the problems of cultural intercommunication in today's world. Subsequent chapters are grouped in three categories: "The Voices of the Writers," "Critical Approaches to Cames," and "Fictionalizing the Nation." Part 2, "Portuguese Language and Literature Outside Portugal," comprises one section devoted to the Portuguese language in Africa, followed by studies about Portuguese discoveries as part of the historical process of remembering and forging one's identity, and finally a comprehensive historical development of Portuguese writing, both in Portuguese and English, in the United States. Part 3, "Portuguese Literature and Criticism Available in English: Suggested Readings" details the recent literary happenings which point to a possible renaissance in Portuguese literary production. The concluding part of this volume offers a short, comprehensive listing of anthologies, general studies, and the most popular translations of the best of Portuguese writing from Portugal and Africa. This lively volume constitutes a first pioneering effort to contribute to a deepening appreciation and understanding of Portuguese writing. Anyone interested in ethnic writing will find this book an invaluable education resource with which to begin an exploration of Portuguese writing in the United States. Asela Rodriguez de Laguna is associate professor of Spanish and director of the Hispanic Civilization & Language Studies Program. She is the author of Notes on Puerto Rican Literature: Images and Identities: An Introduction, and editor of Images and Identities: The Puerto Rican in Two World Contexts."--Provided by publisher.

Publisher Description

Diversions and Animadversions is divided into three parts. The first contains Coleman's literary essays including a lengthy piece on Eça de Quieros, the great master of Portuguese realism, and shorter pieces on the Argentinian writer and Borges disciple, Adolfo Bioy Casares, as well as a review of the most recent translation of the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca. Coleman's greatest passion, however, was for music, and part two contains essays, concert and book reviews, and reports on the cultural situation of music. Among the subjects examined here are the operas of Schoenberg, Berg, Richard Strauss, the recently published letters of Toscanini, the music criticism of Virgil Thomson, the fluctuating critical reputation of Jean Sibelius, and the "authentic" performance practice movement, along with considerations of such instrumentalists as Sviatoslav Richter and Alicia de Larrocha. The book concludes with Coleman's travel writings, which are both evocative mood pieces and incisive social and political commentary.

The Portuguese fiction that awakened public debate on imperialism The colonial wars in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau in the 1960s and 1970s were Portugal's Vietnam. The novels discussed in this study, written by António Lobo Antunes, Lídia Jorge and Manuel Alegre among others, aroused passionate responses from the reading public and initiated a national debate, otherwise lacking in the contemporary press, with their systematic deconstruction of the rhetoric of patriotism and colonialism of António Salazar's regime. The author's approach is of necessity grounded in postcolonial thought, as these works represent the awakening of a post-imperial conscience in Portuguese literature and society. ISABEL MOUTINHO is a Lecturer in Spanish and Portuguese at La Trobe University, Australia.

Hercules and the King of Portugal investigates how representations of masculinity figure in the fashioning of Spanish national identity, scrutinizing ways that gender performances of two early modern male icons—Hercules and King Sebastian—are structured to express enduring nationhood. The classical hero Hercules features prominently in Hispanic foundational fictions and became intimately associated with the Hapsburg monarchy in the early sixteenth century. King Sebastian of Portugal (1554–78), both during his lifetime and after his violent death, has been inserted into his own land’s charter myth, even as competing interests have adapted his narratives to promote Spanish power. The hybrid oral and written genre of poetic Spanish theater, as purveyor and shaper of myth, was well situated to stage and resolve dilemmas relating both to lineage determined by birth and performance of masculinity, in ways that would ideally uphold hierarchy. Dian Fox’s ideological analysis exposes how the two icons are subject to political manipulations in seventeenth-century Spanish theater and other media. Fox finds that officially sanctioned and sometimes popularly produced narratives are undercut by dynamic social and gendered processes: “Hercules” and “Sebastian” slip outside normative discourses and spaces to enact nonnormative behaviors and unreproductive masculinities.

Among the many consequences of Spain’s annexation of Portugal from 1580 to 1640 was an increase in the number of Portuguese authors writing in Spanish. One can trace this practice as far back as the medieval period, although it was through Gil Vicente, Jorge de Montemayor, and others that Spanish-language texts entered the mainstream of literary expression in Portugal. Proficiency in both languages gave Portuguese authors increased mobility throughout the empire. For those with literary aspirations, Spanish offered more opportunities to publish and greater readership, which may be why it is nearly impossible to find a Portuguese author who did not participate in this trend during the dual monarchy. Over the centuries these authors and their works have been erroneously defined in terms of economic opportunism, questions of language loyalty, and other reductive categories. Within this large group, however, is a subcategory of authors who used their writings in Spanish to imagine, explore, and celebrate their Portuguese heritage. Manuel de Faria e Sousa, Ângela de Azevedo, Jacinto Cordeiro, António de Sousa de Macedo, and Violante do Céu, among many others, offer a uniform yet complex answer to what it means to be from Portugal, constructing and claiming their Portuguese identity from within a Castilianized existence. Whereas all texts produced in Iberia during the early modern period reflect the distinct social, political, and cultural realities sweeping across the peninsula to some degree, Portuguese literature written in Spanish offers a unique vantage point from which to see these converging landscapes. Being Portuguese in Spanish explores the cultural cross-pollination that defined the era and reappraises a body of works that uniquely addresses the intersection of language, literature, politics, and identity.