Lusophone BLOG TAKEOVER #1

From the ashes of this uniquely chaotic academic year rises a fresh and vibrant CRSN Takeover series. This time the editorial torch is taken up by a crack team of classical reception scholars based at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The CRSN executive committee are delighted to be able to help showcase the work of this industrious team with our community. As the name of the takeover tells us, our Portuguese and Brazilian colleagues are not only looking to attract contributions from students and scholars in their home countries, but from all over the Portuguese-speaking world. So, friends, over to you!

Two universes, one team

Portugal and Brazil have been partners in centuries of cultural interaction, more recently though they have also become close collaborators in research into the influence of the classical world on their literatures. Now, let’s introduce ourselves!

From the top and clockwise, we are: Maria de Fátima Silva, Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Coimbra, Portugal; Susana Marques Pereira,  Adjunct Professor in the same University and Group; and Tereza Virgínia Ribeiro Barbosa, Professor of Classical Studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte.

Portugal and Brazil, two parallel destinies

Language, culture, sensitivity invite a common view of two countries that history has brought together, without, however, taking away their identity and autonomy. Therefore, the final balance must always be the result of a sum of similarities and differences.

The period covered by this ‘kinship’, from the 16th to the 21st century, requires an overall vision of the establishment of a cultural profile of Portugal and Brazil, from the Renaissance to the contemporary, with all that this implies in sharing a historical experience ‘in part’ common.

Portuguese incursion, contaminated with a European purpose to unveil new worlds, introduced into the old lands of Santa Cruz new cultural models, already altered by Portuguese sensitivity to the humanistic standards of the Renaissance.

A huge clash between Europe and America produced the constitution of a “post-ancient and post-medieval” universe on the western margin of the Atlantic. The dimensions of this clash do not allow us to assume an easy fusion. The antagonistic forces of invention, innovation and tradition were set in motion to generate the new world. Undoubtedly this interaction implied adaptation, acceptance, hybridism, and harmonisation of the various parties involved.

Portugal was to Brazil the most direct means of access to the classics. No doubt the writers and actors who imposed themselves on the New World did their preparation mostly at the University of Coimbra. Upon returning to Brazilian lands, they disseminated, metamorphosed, (de)formed, (de)built forms of understanding and appropriation of the Hellenic and Latin past, charged with Lusitanian impressions.

Even if marked by the Portuguese linguistic and cultural model, Brazil did not fail to oppose its own nature and identity. A new literature was emerging, which, despite being expressed in Portuguese, still had a peculiar mark due to another context and experience. Until Brazil’s independence, in 1822, its literature was known as “Portuguese literature produced overseas” or “in Brazil”; only with the political liberation did Brazil begin a path of creativity truly its own.

This was the moment when, after the Portuguese court had been for many years in Brazil, political instability in Portugal demanded the return of the royal family to Lisbon (1820).  Pedro de Alcântara de Bragança, the first-born son of the Portuguese king, was appointed Prince Regent of Brazil (1821). And, although faithful to his father, he refused the Portuguese court’s order that he should return to Portugal and reduce Brazil to its former status as a colony. Brazil’s independence then took place on September 7, 1822, when the ‘Cry of the Ipiranga’ was heard, by the Ipiranga River in today’s São Paulo. One month later, the then Dom Pedro I was acclaimed Emperor of Brazil, and the country was recognised as the Empire of Brazil. Pedro de Alcântara, with his choice, started a love affair never interrupted and, from this case, never again Portugal and Brazil let the Atlantic separate them.

Culture and literature then also deepened their independence process. This resulted in the emergence of a new kind of classical reception, made up of contradictory trends, fusions of the classical and the modern, the universal and the local, the conventional and the innovative.

In all literary modalities – tale, novel, poetry, theatre – the classical mark is widely spread on both sides of the Atlantic. In all of them, a Portuguese trait seems constant. But an idiosyncrasy imposed itself on the background.

Reception, a shared passion

For 6 or 7 decades, Portuguese, Brazilian and South American classicists in general have joined the research at first promoted mainly by colleagues from the Literary Theory or Portuguese, Brazilian and South American Spanish-speaking Literatures.

Once this interest was aroused, a joint approach seemed natural and mandatory!

Step by step

Courses:

Some shared courses allowed a lively debate and opened paths and affinities.

A first doctorate in the bilateral modality ‘sandwich’ took place, in 1998, under the guidance of Maria Helena da Rocha Pereira (University of Coimbra) and Alceu Dias Lima (State University of São Paulo – Araraquara).

The academic exchange Brazil-Portugal with regard to Reception Studies intensified in 2009 with a publication, as a result of a new course offered by Drs. Maria de Fátima Silva and Tereza Virgínia Barbosa, in Brazil: Translation and Recreation. At that time these two became the main objectives of the group.

This volume focuses on the presence of classics in Brazilian and Portuguese texts, showing both the importance of translation for accessibility between cultures, and the transformation caused by exchange. Based on the appropriation of ancient myths, these studies contemplated the theatre as a first purpose.

Years later, in 2012, still under the supervision of Dr Rocha Pereira and Dr Filomena Hirata (University of São Paulo) a post doctorate was concluded. On that occasion, translation, recreation and reception in the theatre were combined.

More recently, interest in the classical marks in poetry broadened the researchers’ goal. But translation remained an indispensable tool.  For the general public, particularly actors, directors and scenographers, there is no classical theatre without translation. But the same thing can be said about poetry in relation to scholars from other fields, vernacular languages, history and philosophy.

Workshops and Conferences:

A series of workshops and conferences were held, first occasionally and then more regularly.

Between the CECH, of Coimbra, and PRAGMA, of the Philosophers of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, a conference was established, with biannual regularity, alternately on one and the other side of the Atlantic, which has already fulfilled its 4th edition.  The themes have always integrated literary and philosophical approaches to ancient texts, reserving a space for the ‘classical tradition’. The 2nd edition was even exclusively dedicated to the reception of the classics.

Another initiative, extended to Latin America on a more general level, also had an auspicious process: CLASTEA, a sequence of conferences, this time organized by Portugal, Spain and Argentina. The title CLAS-TEA (Classical Theatre) pointed in this case to a greater specificity: Greek-Latin Theatre and its reception. There were already four editions of this program: Mar del Plata (Argentina) 2011, Rosario (Argentina) 2013, Coimbra (Portugal) 2016, Santiago de Compostela (Spain) 2018.

Publications:

A thematic volume inspired by the results of the II PRAGMA …

Two volumes from III CLASTEA…

In 2012, Belo Horizonte and Coimbra dedicated a volume of essays to the study of Mário de Carvalho, a very successful Portuguese novelist. The anachronism is, in several titles by M. Carvalho, a weapon of satire about the contemporary Portuguese reality. And the Greek and Latin classics the natural reference for what European culture is today…

Finally, in 2017, the team opened a regular space in Nuntius Antiquus periodical, for the first time in Latin America, entirely dedicated to the Classic Reception.

So, here ends our first takeover blog! If you work on classical receptions in the Lusophone world please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us, the takeover editors, and consider submitting a post about your work, or about any kind of classical reception activity in your area. We look forward to hearing from you!