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Portuguese Myths and Time

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Helder Godinho
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Extract

By Portuguese myths we mean several kinds of narratives, all of which actualize fundamental aspects of the Portuguese national imagination. Some are foundation narratives (Sâo Mamede, Ourique); others are historical facts that were sung so often over the years by Portuguese and foreign poets that they came to signify basic schemes of the human imagination (Inês de Castro's pure love, whose realization was frustrated by a fight between two men, father and son); other so-called Portuguese myths, on the contrary, are built around concepts that give metaphysical shape to supposed characteristics that define the national soul (saudosismo, the doctrine of nostalgia, which attempts to define the Portuguese national soul as the search for a mythical initial unity that would create a wholeness in which contraries would be abolished; the Fifth Empire as its realization on Earth); other Portuguese myths express the supposed divine predestination of the people and of the Portuguese Man, based upon divine intervention in the founding of the nation in Ourique (the Fifth Empire that would be the Age of Spirit announced by Joachim de Fiore); still others are based on historically negative facts (King Sebastian and the defeat at Alcazarquibir) but transformed through archetypal elements to show the capacity for renewal out of the defeat, a renewal that goes beyond real historical renewal to include spiritual renewal of the Portuguese Man and his fatherland, which should produce the Fifth Empire conceived either in earthly or spiritual terms. To these myths I will add a legend preceding the formation of the nation, King Roderick's Legend, because it attempts to justify the loss of Visigothic Spain to the Arabs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 43 , Issue 170 , June 1995 , pp. 69 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

Notes

1. This article is adapted from a paper read in Ascona at "Recontre d'Eranos," August 21-30 1994: "Anfänge / Commencements / Beginnings."

2. Cf. R-M Pindal, Floresta de leyendas heroicas españolas. Rodrigo, ultimo godo, III volumes, Madrid, 1942, 1944, and 1948.

3. Luis F. Lindley Cintra, Crónica Geral de Espanha de 1344, vol. II, Lisbon, 1984, pp. 298-332.

4. Luis F. Lindley Cintra, «Sobre a Formação e Evolução da Lenda de Ourique (até à Crónica de 1419)», Revista da Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa, XXIII, 3rd vol., no. 1,1957, pp. 168-215, p. 198.

5. J. Mattoso, «A Primeira Tarde Portuguesa», in Portugal Medieval, novas interpre tações, Lisbon, 1985, pp. 11-35, p. 14.

6. We should recall that saudade comes from the latin word, solitatem, which links it to solitude. See Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos, «A Saudade Portuguesa», in Filosofia da Saudade, sel e org. de Afonso Botelho e António Brás de Oliveira, Lisbon, 1986, pp. 145-160. According to her, the foreign word that best trans lates saudade is probably the German word Sehnsucht, especially when the saudade has a metaphysical implication.

7. Dom Duarte, «Do Nojo, Pesar, Desprazer, Avorrecimento e Suidade» (Leal Conselheiro, cap. XXV), in A Filosofia da Saudade, pp. 13-17.

8. Maria Leonor Machado de Sousa, "Pedro I de Portugal e Inès de Castro," in Portugal. Mitos Revistados, Y.K. Centeno (ed.), Lisbon, 1993, pp. 51-68.

9. António Patrício, Teatro Completo, Lisbon, 1982 (Pedro o Cru is a play written in 1918).

10. Cf. A Evolução do Sebastianismo, 1947, p. 8, quoted by Joel Serrão, in Dicionário de Historia de Portugal, "Sebastianismo," Lisbon, 1971.

11. Cf. Teixeira de Pascoaes, «O Espirito Lusitano ou o Saudosismo» in A Filosofia da Saudade, sel e org. de Afonso Botelho e António Braz Teixeira, Lisbon, 1986, pp. 21-36, p. 27.

12. Ibid., p. 25.

13. Cf. Fernando Pessoa, Sobre Portugal. Introdução ao problema nacional, recolha de textos de Maria Isabel Rocheta e Maria Paula Morão, introdução e organização de Joel Serrão, Lisbon, 1979, pp. 45-6 and 245-6.

14. Ibid., pp. 52 and 229.

15. See also Joel Serrão, ibid., pp. 53-4

16. Ibid., p. 121