Regionalisms and resistance: region and ideology in
the twentieth-century Portuguese novel
Publication Date
December 13, 2022
Creator
Abstract
This thesis constitutes a re-interpretation of regional spaces, landscapes and geographical dynamics in the twentieth-century Portuguese novel, through an ideological lens. Adopting politicised and spatialised understandings of the region, of regionalism, of ideology and of resistance, the study encompasses narratives published at different moments in the previous century, focusing on different regions of continental Portugal, and articulating distinct ideological projects. Chapter I conducts a diachronic overview of regional inequalities, divisions and tensions in Portuguese politics from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first, followed by an outline of regionalism’s ideological significance in narrative fiction over the same period.
Subsequent chapters of the thesis are then dedicated to the ideological role performed by regionalism in six novels by four different authors. Chapter II concentrates on two novels by Aquilino Ribeiro that offer explicit and implicit ideological readings, both of which can be interpreted as oppositional and conservative in different ways. Chapter III examines the complex and often ambivalent articulation of regionalist discourse with sexual politics, in a well known narrative by Agustina Bessa-Luís and another by Lídia Jorge. Finally, Chapter IV highlights the role of regionalist dynamics in two novels by the Communist, Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago, which can be described as engaging in a productive form of ‘militant particularism’. These chapters, while constituting separate analyses of narrative fiction, are united by their insistence on regionalism’s central role in the wider ideological objectives espoused within Portuguese literary texts.
Item Type
ethesis
Thesis Type
PhD
Supervisors
Subjects (LC)
Associated Schools / Departments
School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies
eprints ID
71561
UoN Repository URI
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Name
Peter Haysom - PhD thesis - as submitted.pdf
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Full-text
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Examined
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1.72 MB
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