Abstract
This article examines Jorge de Sena’s interrogation of power and resistance in O Físico Prodigioso (1966). While the second half of the novella functions as a clear allegory for the Portuguese and Brazilian dictatorships of the mid-twentieth century, political oppression and repression are in fact deeply ingrained in Sena’s vision of society. The apparent freedom that is witnessed before and after dictatorship is not (and cannot be) universal, because for Sena even the power of discourse holds the potential for oppression. Drawing on Foucault’s work, the article posits that O Físico Prodigioso’s shifting narrative functions as a call for continual resistance against oppression in all of its forms.
Highlights
Almost fifty years after it was first published in a short story collection (1966), Jorge de Sena’s O Físico Prodigioso remains one of the most textually challenging, experimental pieces of prose fiction in the Portuguese language
While the established criticism serves to illuminate this complex and confounding text to some extent, a significant lacuna may be identified in critical responses to O Físico Prodigoso so far, for there remains to be explored in detail the continually fluctuating power relations that mark all interactions between characters within the text
I agree with Harland that contemporary readings of the novella must account for the socio-political allegory of Portuguese society under the Estado Novo that is undoubtedly present throughout the second half of the text [175]
Summary
The first half of O Físico Prodigioso pivots on the question of relationships. Urraca is revealed to be the raison d’être of the físico’s journey and without the relationship between the two, the story would have no driving force, for the survival of their mutual love under duress is the redeeming feature of the second half of the novella. The parallel columns function as a bold challenge to the divisive way in which women have often been categorized within a binary and simplistic ‘angel/whore’ framework, and as Vessels observes, they serve as a reminder that there are always various ways of seeing and interpreting the world [67] These narrative columns, which stand out visually in the book, draw a reader’s attention to Sena’s disruption of the idea of woman as sexual object and passive sexual being—such a reconfiguration of the conventional literary representations of female sexual passivity occurs perhaps most forcefully in the episode where the físico and Urraca first encounter one another, and he performs his cure on her wasting body
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