Portuguese Letters Research Articles

Inter-sexual Mate Competition in Humans: A Historical Example from Seventeenth Century Portugal.

Inter-sexual mate competition occurs any time opposite-sex individuals simultaneously seek to acquire or maintain exclusive access to the same sexual partner. This underappreciated form of mate competition has been anecdotally documented in several avian and mammalian species, and systematically described among Japanese macaques and humans. Here, we extend the concept of inter-sexual mate competition by reassessing a remarkable series of Portuguese letters, penned in 1664 and later discovered and translated by Mott and Assunção (J Homosex 16:91-104, 1989). The letters comprise one side of a correspondence between two males, former lovers who were scrutinized by the Portuguese Inquisition. After ending the relationship, the recipient of the letters was betrothed to a woman, which provoked a jealous response from his jilted male lover and pleas to reunite. We argue that the letters portray a prolonged sequence of inter-sexual mate competition in which a male and female competitor vied for the same man. An established taxonomy of mate competition tactics was applied to the behavior of both competitors illustrating many parallels with contemporary examples of inter-sexual mate competition. Through this comparison, we show that modern mate competition taxonomies can be fruitfully applied to historical texts and that inter-sexual mate competition occurred hundreds of years before the present. Other examples of inter-sexual mate competition are likely to exist in the historical record, providing a rich source of scientific information if appropriate theoretical frameworks are employed. Indeed, any time individuals are attracted to sexual partners who behave in a bisexual manner, then inter-sexual mate competition can ensue with members of the other sex.

Епістолярний роман в класиці літератури: прецедент «Португальських листів» Ґієраґа та «Листів перуанки» Ф. де Ґрафіньї

The dynamics of the text’s stay in the circle of literary classics becomes clear only over time: the experience of epistolary novels of the Enlightenment is very indicative of many aspects of literary production. “Portuguese Letters” by Guilleragues (second half of the XVIIth century) and “Letters from a Peruvian” by F. de Graffigny (middle of the XVIIIth century) offer material for understanding the mechanisms of the novel’s timeless success. These texts have experienced powerful recognition, oblivion, and rediscovery throughout history. From the history of creation, genre canon, literary process to the system of motives, rhetoric, figures, and metaphors – everything in these works is a kaleidoscope of the widest readership. The extra-literary factors and intra-textual mechanisms of the two novels by Guilleragues and F. de Graffigny together shed light on the secret of the power of the work in the context of the classics of literature. At the same time, they encourage us to check the essence of such categories as author’s mystification, fictionality, mimeticity in the communication arch of an artistic work. The article reveals these questions, which allows us to introduce the “Portuguese Letters” of Guilleragues and the “Letters from a Peruvian” by F. de Graffigny into the circle of current issues of modern literary studies to fill the gap in Ukrainian literary studies around the theme of the formation, flowering, and power of the epistolary genre in the history of French literature.

Fragmentos da negociação epistolar entre potiguaras no contexto da guerra luso-holandesa (1645): “xe nheenga” / “xe papera”

Drawing on the definition of the communicative function of the letters written in Tupi by the Potiguara Indians in 1645 as an offer of surrender, the purpose of Pthis work is to analyze such documentation regarding it as a space for negotiation among Potiguaras, textually built on the superposition of traditional Tupinambá modes of expression (directly quoted speech, interpellation with kinship terms) and Portuguese letters (opening, closure). The stylistic resources employed in nheenga/papera either distinguish or approximate these correspondences from other letters with the same communicative function exchanged between Europeans in the scenario of the Portuguese-Dutch war unleashed in the Brazilian northeast. The research corpus comprises six potiguara letters belonging to the National Archives of The Hague and written between August and October, 1645.

“Iscrevu esta carta so para bosemese saber”: a deixis social em cartas Romenas e Portuguesas da Grande Guerra

"“I am writing this letter only for you to know”: Social Deixis in Romanian and Portuguese Letters from the Great War. This paper analyses the use of address forms in letters from World War I written by Romanian and Portuguese soldiers, with the objective of comparing the discursive configuration of the interlocutive distance (Carreira 1997) in the two languages. The analysis, based on online and printed corpus reveals systematic similarities between the two languages concerning nominal address forms: the frequent use of intensity markers (possessives, qualificative adjectives, vocatives, diminutives) to express affection towards the recipients. There are differences concerning the use of pronominal address forms. Parent-son relationships are asymmetrically constructed in both cultures, which is reflected by the use of intermediary pronouns você and dumneata, but in husband-wife correspondence only the pronoun tu is used in Portuguese, while in Romanian letters both tu and dumneata appear. In the correspondence between friends and colleagues there are some differences: the pronoun tu is used exclusively in Portuguese, while in Romanian there is an alternation between tu and dumneata. Overall, this study shows that interlocutive distance was higher in Romanian than in Portuguese at the beginning of the 20th century. Keywords: Portuguese Address Forms; Romanian Address Forms; Epistolary Writing; War Letters; World War I "

Anselmo Castelo Branco: Profiling an Alchemist Prophet

Abstract The prophet, alchemist, and physician Anselmo Castelo Branco, while not an unknown name in Portuguese letters, still stands as a largely misunderstood author of the intellectually troubled Portuguese eighteenth century. He is mostly known for his alchemical opus, the Ennoea, and so far scholars have only given superficial attention to his non-alchemical works, leading to significant bias. While not denying Castelo Branco’s relevance as a medical and alchemical writer, this article hopes to be the first to offer a detailed reconstruction of this author’s biography as well as an extensive analysis of all his known written works. Besides his known contributions to the sciences, his ideas on the Portuguese messianic cult of Sebastianism, prognostication, and the definition of accurate prophecy are analyzed, revealing a complex and nuanced vision which aimed to harmonize the fragmented fields of Portuguese eighteenth-century messianism and millenarianism.

Um breve histórico da escrita Mundurukú

Este estudo descreve três momentos que marcaram a formação e a evolução da ortografia da língua Mundurukú (Tupí). O percurso histórico mostra que, até recentemente, a função principal da escrita na comunidade eram os ensinamentos religiosos. Um dos primeiros textos escritos na língua foi um catecismo, produzido no início do século XX, de autoria de Frei Hugo Mense, missionário franciscano. A constituição de um alfabeto unicamente Mundurukú ocorreu somente na década de 1960, proposto por missionárias do SIL. É nesse momento que a escrita começa a se tornar uma ferramenta de ensino-aprendizagem da língua materna, porém ainda de forma secundária. Pouco tempo depois o alfabeto passou por uma revisão e alguns grafemas foram alterados, buscando-se alcançar uma semelhança maior com os grafemas da Língua Portuguesa. A análise das correspondências grafofonêmicas mostra que a função atribuída à escrita foi determinante para a escolha de quais características do Mundurukú falado deveriam ou não ser representados graficamente, e como essas escolhas impactaram o ensino da língua na educação local.

Escritoras monjas. Autoridad y autoría en la escritura conventual femenina de los Siglos de Oro

Escritoras monjas. Autoridad y autoría en la escritura conventual femenina de los Siglos de Oro

Maria Teresa HortaPoint of Honour: Selected Poems of Maria Teresa Horta, Ana Raquel Fernandes

Reviews 248 Achille Mbembe’s concept of ‘necropolitics’, how Africa has long symbolized death in Western consciousness, Jones highlights the parallel between colonial and patriarchal oppression in two narratives by Momplé and Cassamo ending in the suicide of their main protagonist. If Jones’s examination of hunger and food as gendered symbols of oppression and deprivation illuminates how FRELIMO replicated the colonial connection between women and domesticity, it might have benefited from a more anthropological perspective on ‘the politics of the belly’ highlighting the intrinsic link between power and ingestion in Africa.1 Sharp and clear in its writing, ambitious and stimulating in its thematic and comparative layout and scope, Battleground Bodies is an important contribution to Lusophone African literary studies and to Lusophone postcolonial studies more generally. It is an engaging read that produces brilliant close-readings while conveying a subtle and complex understanding of Mozambique, convincingly showing the continued relevance of resistance literature in Portuguese-speaking Africa. Maria Teresa Horta, Point of Honour: Selected Poems of Maria Teresa Horta, translated by Lesley Saunders and introduced by Ana Raquel Fernandes (Reading: Two Rivers Press, 2019). 237 pages. Print. Reviewed by Ana Filipa Prata (Universidad de los Andes) Point of Honour is the first anthology of poetry by Maria Teresa Horta published in English. It presents a selection of more than eighty poems chosen by Horta herself and her husband, the late Luís Barros, and translated by Lesley Saunders, a contemporary British poet. This book constitutes a landmark in the reception of this major Portuguese poet who is mostly known internationally for being the author, together with Maria Velho da Costa and Maria Isabel Barreno, of the Novas Cartas Portuguesas [New Portuguese Letters], published in 1972. The chosen title for this collection — taken from one of the poems — is a very enlightening editorial decision: this anthology is meant to be a real point of honour for Horta’s literary work; it is both a poetic statement and a moment of consecration of a singular and revolutionary voice that has shivered patriarchal discourses and conservative mores in Portugal throughout the last decades. Maria Teresa Horta has been consistently publishing since 1960, from the inaugural Espelho incicial [First Mirror] to Estranhezas [Oddities], her last book published, in 2018. Horta has thoroughly cultivated a poetic work that is nowadays unanimously considered groundbreaking in both rhetorical and thematic terms, elaborating sensual and erotic expression, defying a conventional representation of womanhood and its imagery, aiming at the creation of an independent feminine discursive location. This anthology gives an account of this historical evolution and poetic consolidation; each of Horta’s 1 Jean-François Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, 1st English edn (London: Longman, 1993). Reviews 249 books published from the ’60s up to the first decades of the twenty-first century is represented by two to five poems, which fosters a comprehensive approach to her profuse poetic creation. This bilingual edition opens with an introduction by Ana Raquel Fernandes, whose recent research draws mainly on female Portuguese and English authors. Fernandes provides very valuable information on Horta’s literary trajectory, but also on the political and social commitment of the author during the times of dictatorship, stressing her engagement in the defence of women’s rights. Fernandes briefly comments on several poems and highlights the main themes in Horta’s poetry such as women’s bodies and sexuality, social and literary insubordination, the representation of mother and motherhood, and the intertextual and intermedial references often present in her poetry, especially in her recent publications. There follows a translator’s note in which Lesley Saunders comments on her first approach to Maria Teresa Horta’s poetry, how she came to meet her, and how these translations are the result of a fruitful dialogue between these two poets. Even if Saunders does not have a deep knowledge of Portuguese language — as she admits — she has managed through the dialogue with the author to immerse herself in the poetic essence of Horta’s poetry and ‘bring it across’ to English-speaking territory. The thorough translations by Lesley Saunders are an example of what Haroldo de Campos called ‘transcreation’: Saunders goes beyond...

“Formar um bloco com os nossos corpos”: o(s) corpo(s) localizado(s) em "Novas Cartas Portuguesas"

The controversial and revolutionary book New Portuguese Letters (1972), by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa, can be characterised by two interlinked motifs: an insistence on bringing numerous (and highly localised) experiences of women into representation, and the recurring image of the female body (or female bodies). Considering these two elements in tandem, this essay will argue that the Three Marias anticipate, through their literary text, the “politics of location” (Rich et al) that have influenced feminist theory and practice since the 1980s. This study will consider the ways in which New Portuguese Letters attributes a specific “location” (or multiple locations) to numerous female bodies, in order to denote individual material experiences, and the extent to which the individual bodies of women are used by the authors to create a “block” (or a “barricade”) of resistance and global female solidarity. It will conclude, however, that the geometry and limits of a single body are necessary elements for the construction of this durable and unbreakable block.

Thinking through our Sisters Acting through their Words

This paper aims to demonstrate some points in common between Virginia Woolf’s ideas expounded in Three Guineas (1938) and the words of the Three Marias in New Portuguese Letters (1972) in order to reflect on their validity in today’s world. The themes of war, institutionalised discrimination against women and the general acceptance of systems of oppression will be addressed. Adopting a method Woolf herself used in her essay, I will refer to current newspaper stories, “history in the raw” (Woolf 2008: 159) to show how the world has/has not changed since these two pieces of work were published and how both can still be used to comment on reality in the 21 st century in England, Portugal and other parts of the world as well. I will also refer to the work of Women in Black Belgrade, a group of Balkan activists born out of the war in the former Yugoslavia in 1991 and still at work today. Their work is used as the ultimate example of the need to think through our sisters, women writers, observers and critics of their society to reassess our own world today, to take responsibility and, thus, be better equipped to take action and operate change.

The kingdom of Portugal, homage and papal ‘fiefdom’ in the second half of the twelfth Century

This paper examines the relationship between the newly formed kingdom of Portugal and the papacy in the second half of the twelfth century. The kings of Portugal sought a close alliance with the papacy and their relationship has been seen as that of ‘vassal’ and overlord. However, it seems likely that this alliance owed more to the tradition of monastic protection grants. The act of homage performed to the papal legate by King Afonso I is an example of a wider use of the homage ceremony. Homage was not only used to cement ‘feudal’ bonds, but also to make peace or to confirm pacts and agreements. The annual census paid by the kingdom to Rome was part of the same grant of protectio. The papal–Portuguese letters used the same language and terminology as ecclesiastical protectio, which was awarded by the papacy to monasteries, churches and eventually kingdoms and kings.

¿Por qué estudiar letras modernas y lenguas extranjeras?

El siguiente trabajo aborda, de manera breve, la importancia de aprender lenguas y literaturas extranjeras, partiendo de la experiencia personal en relación con las letras portuguesas, mediante la reflexión acerca de la lengua y sus implicacionesculturales, entre ellas, el conocimiento del otro y el reconocimiento de identidades y realidades lingüísticas diversas que dan cuenta de lo humano,tanto a nivel social como individual. Se esboza, además, la importancia de la reciente incorporación de las letras portuguesas en la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la UNAM como respuesta a la necesidad misma de aprender y enseñar lengua y literaturas portuguesas en México.

Silêncio nas páginas de Novas Cartas Portuguesas (Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta e Maria Velho da Costa) e na imagética monocromática de Helena Almeida – uma perspetiva interdisciplinar

THE SILENCE IN THE PAGES OF NEW PORTUGUESE LETTERS (MARIA ISABEL BARRENO, MARIA TERESA HORTA AND MARIA VELHO DA COSTA) AND IN THE MONOCHROMATIC IMAGERY OF HELENA ALMEIDA – AN INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE
 It is with greatest expression that, in the 1970s, the Portuguese female authors begin to claim a social space and a voice of their own, mostly through literature but also, even though more occasionally, in the field of visual arts. Dancing and creating from and around silence, they try to break free from it in order to broaden the horizons of a feminine worldview – and at the forefront of this cultural battle cannot go unnoticed names like Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, Maria Velho da Costa (the Three Marys) or Helena Almeida, stretching the threads of the ball that would allow them to get to the weaving of a new collective discourse and to participate in it with a relevant and compelling originality.

A carta, a tradição e a voz feminina

O objetivo deste ensaio é articular dois momentos poéticos distintos entre si a partir de dois motivos comuns: a voz feminina e a carta como dispositivo de filiação. Os dois momentos poéticos são aqueles representados pelas Novas cartas portuguesas, de Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta e Maria Velho da Costa, e pelo o livro O poeta de Pondichéry, de Adília Lopes. A carta será então considerada como um procedimento de substituição da presença e da voz, movimentação que fica ainda mais pertinente quando se acrescenta ao cenário a própria reivindicação de uma “voz feminina” atrelada a esse procedimento.

FROM MARIANA ALCOFORADO TO “LAS TRES MARÍAS”, A WAY OF BRAVERY AND RESISTANCE THROUGH THE SPEECH

After several decades of the Salazar regime, Portugal is in a period of social disorder. A few years later, the project called “Las Tres Marias” emerged, giving way to a feminist liberalism in which women were expected to become aware of their condition, regardless of their social status. This movement was born from the New Portuguese Letters, and obtained great support abroad.

CÍCERO “EM LINGOAGE PORTUGUESA”QUINHENTISTA

This paper aims to deepen the understanding of the relation between the Portuguese letters of the 16th century and the “Latin auctoritates”, specifically as to the rhetorical and ethical appropriation and use of Cicero’s treatises of moral philosophy, translated by Duarte de Resende. Then, it places Cicero’s translations into perspective with other questions of his time, such as the topic of enhanced valuation of vernacular language, of padouan averroism and of diffusion of erasmist thought

Twentieth-Century Latin American Literary Studies and Cultural Autonomy

Twentieth-Century Latin American Literary Studies and Cultural Autonomy

Private language made public: The language of letters as literature

This paper discusses the genre of the epistolary novel as an experiment in narrative style in the seventeenth century. It is considered in terms of the appropriation of the subjective language characteristics of the intimate letter as a vehicle for narrative fiction, intended to be accessible to a public, not a private audience. I question the popular analogy of the private letter and the face-to-face communicative situation in pragmatic or rhetorical terms; and argue that its deictic organisation makes the letter frame a candidate for a realist representation of the private stories of characters in fiction. I then consider the attempted fusion of epistolary language with narrative in literature by comparing authentic love-letters (Dorothy Osborne's love-letters to William Temple) and examples of the early epistolary novel (Roger L'Estrange's translation of the anonymous Portuguese Letters, and Aphra Behn's Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister.

Form in "Novas Cartas Portuguesas"

Few works in the history of Portuguese letters have captured the widespread attention and critical acclaim generated by the 1972 publication of Novas Cartas Portuguesas by Maria Teresa Horta, Maria Isabel Barreno, and Maria Velho da Costa. Banned by the Portuguese right-wing government shortly after publication, it was finally released in 1974, and within a year was translated into nearly every modern European language. In January 1975, upon publication of Helen R. Lane's English version, the book received notices in major literary reviews throughout the United States. And yet, even though more than a decade has passed since then, the significance of Novas Cartas Portuguesas as a pioneer work by three women writers on women remains largely unexplored. The purpose of the present study is to begin this process of exploration-discussing the international best-seller within a broader context of Portuguese reality, and examining its importance as a socio-political document. But I shall also address a more theoretical issue related to the form of the

Did Guilleragues Write "The Portuguese Letters"?

Did Guilleragues Write "The Portuguese Letters"?