In Dialogue with Saramago: Essays in comparative literature
edited by Adriana Alves de Paula Martins and Mark Sabine
published by Manchester Spanish and Portuguese Studies (2006), price £9.00
In Dialogue with Saramago: Essays in comparative literature is a collection of new studies of Saramago's work, written by some of the world's leading specialists in contemporary Portuguese literature. As one of the first English-language volumes to be published on this internationally acclaimed author, it is aimed both at literary scholars and at fans of Saramago's novels, and uses a comparative approach to build up an overview of his 40-year long writing career. Comparisons of Saramago's works with those of Günter Grass, Gabriel García Márquez and Gore Vidal offer an assessment in the context of the contemporary international literary scene. Meanwhile, Saramago's contribution to literary traditions within Portugal is traced by readings relating his work to that of Camões, Pessoa and Camilo Castelo Branco. Other essays illuminate relationships with some of the best-established figures in literary history, from Dante, Cervantes and Dostoevsky to Borges, Orwell and Camus, in order to complete a picture of Saramago's work within contemporary delineations of the canon of western literature. The volume also contains a critical introduction that focuses on Saramago's assessment of the political implications of quoting and rewriting, and that briefly reviews a number of existing comparative studies of Saramago's work in both English and Portuguese.
List of contributors
- Helena Carvalhão Buescu
- David Frier
- Orland Grossegesse
- Adriana Alves de Paula Martins
- Paulo de Medeiros
- José Ornelas
- Chris Rollason
- Mark Sabine
- Maria Irene Ramalho Santos
- Ellen W. Sapega
Full table of contents
- Mark Sabine & Adriana Alves de Paula Martins,
Introduction: Saramago and the politics of quotation 1
- Ellen W. Sapega, Saramago's 'genius': Camões, Adamastor,
and Ricardo Reis 25
- David Frier, Of false dons and missed opportunities, or how
Calisto Elói and Ricardo Reis failed Portugal 37
- Orlando Grossegesse, About words, tears, and screams:
Dante's Commedia revisited by Borges and Saramago 57
- Helena Carvalhão Buescu, The encounter as failure to meet:
Saramago's Todos os Nomes and Dostoevsky's White Nights 81
- M. Irene Ramalho Santos, All the names: José Saramago and
lyric poetry 91
- Christopher Rollason, How totalitarianism begins at home:
Saramago and George Orwell 105
- José N. Ornelas, Convergences and divergences in Saramago's
Ensaio sobre a Cegueira and Camus's The Plague 121
- Mark Sabine, Levantado do Chão after One Hundred Years of Solitude: the telling of time and truth in Saramago and García Márquez 141
- Adriana Alves de Paula Martins, The poetics of correction in
Gore Vidal's Burr and Saramago's História do Cerco de Lisboa 163
- Paulo de Medeiros, Saramago and Grass 177
Orders
E-mail orders to Anthony.j.lappin@manchester.ac.uk
Sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento