shreds of paradise
THE DREAM OF ADAMIC RESTITUTION
in global early modernity
On 11 February 1535, a group of people burned their clothes on a public square and run screaming through the streets of Amsterdam. They believed to have recovered the primordial purity of the paradisical mankind. Certainly, they were soon captured, sentenced to death and quartered; the event put an end to the sect of Adamites that resurfaced after a millennium of absence in the late mediaeval and early-modern Europe. Its reappearance in the Low Countries may be put in the context of the maritime expansion and the encounter with the naked man, of which such documents as the Letter on the discovery of Brazil by Pero Vaz de Caminha had testified. The relationship between these cultural facts is far from obvious, forming a global conundrum. Hypothetically, the European context of heterodox ideas must have had an influence on the formation of the first transcontinental concepts in the aftermath of the maritime exploration. Certainly, such concepts had a long life in both Portuguese and Brazilian culture, leading to such consequences as the utopia of the Fifth Empire by Padre António Viera in the 17th century. On the other hand, they also shaped the history of the European thought and influenced, in a durable way, the evolution of European notions of otherness and cultural difference. The current research project is thus dedicated to the comparative study of texts and ideas of the Renaissance in the context of a longue durée of heterodox views circulating both in the mediaeval Mediterranean region and the late-medieval and early-modern Europe, tracing their impact in the New World and in other parts of the world implied in the European discoveries. The project's aim is to provide a more insightful interpretation of the interplay of these ideas in the formation of transcontinental imagination and awareness in early modernity.
The pivotal concept of this research project is the idea of the restitution of the primordial, prelapsarian condition of man, Adam in the garden of Eden. The main hypothesis of this research is that this concept of restitution shaped a larger landscape of early-modern transcontinental utopias. The imaginary elaboration of nakedness, that ceases to be a sign of an animal, non-human condition to be transferred into the ideal sphere and to become a sign of purity and higher morality, is just one of the elements. Quite another element is the reflection on language, based on the idea that the prelapsarian speech of man, characterised by a perfect correspondence of words and things, was lost in the biblical episode of the Tower of Babel. The guiding idea of “the restitution of all things” (restitutio omnium) led to the hope that the ideal speech may be recovered in the new conditions created by the encounter of all peoples in which the Portuguese sailors were instrumental. The idea that the Portuguese language may be transformed in a sort of receptacle of the scattered words of the primordial, Adamic tongue, articulated by João de Barros in Diálogo em louvor da nossa linguagem, formed a utopian context in which the world-wide work on languages, performed by both the missionaries and the humanists, was performed. On the other hand, the general concepts of restitutio omnium, a universal return to the unspoiled condition, as well as the notions of concordia and congregatio mundi, pivotal for the thought of the French polymath Guillaume Postel, formed the European context for the political utopia that found its transcontinental articulation in the thought of António Vieira created in Brazil.
The pivotal concept of this research project is the idea of the restitution of the primordial, prelapsarian condition of man, Adam in the garden of Eden. The main hypothesis of this research is that this concept of restitution shaped a larger landscape of early-modern transcontinental utopias. The imaginary elaboration of nakedness, that ceases to be a sign of an animal, non-human condition to be transferred into the ideal sphere and to become a sign of purity and higher morality, is just one of the elements. Quite another element is the reflection on language, based on the idea that the prelapsarian speech of man, characterised by a perfect correspondence of words and things, was lost in the biblical episode of the Tower of Babel. The guiding idea of “the restitution of all things” (restitutio omnium) led to the hope that the ideal speech may be recovered in the new conditions created by the encounter of all peoples in which the Portuguese sailors were instrumental. The idea that the Portuguese language may be transformed in a sort of receptacle of the scattered words of the primordial, Adamic tongue, articulated by João de Barros in Diálogo em louvor da nossa linguagem, formed a utopian context in which the world-wide work on languages, performed by both the missionaries and the humanists, was performed. On the other hand, the general concepts of restitutio omnium, a universal return to the unspoiled condition, as well as the notions of concordia and congregatio mundi, pivotal for the thought of the French polymath Guillaume Postel, formed the European context for the political utopia that found its transcontinental articulation in the thought of António Vieira created in Brazil.
the quest for paradise
My research medieval/early-modern projects at the crossroad of literary studies and the history of ideas focuse on contact of cultures and maritime expansion. The consequences of the maritime discoveries were manifold, and the early-modern attempts at rebuilding the perception of reality according to new data went in directions that may surprise us today.
Medieval and early-modern studies, just like all other disciplines in literary studies and humanities in the broad sense, have gone global, shifting the accents from traditional, well-polished disciplines such as Romance philology, to uncharted territories, mixing their Eurocentric blood with such disciplines as Oriental studies. Certainly, the traditional approaches have a peculiar charm, that of solid wood darkened with age. Long bibliographies and girlands of footnotes give a sense of legacy and participation in something that comes from behind. The thrill they give is quite different than that of exploring unknown literary territory, somewhere in Africa. It is good to be a Romanist, with a cup of tea on an autumn evening. Yet the discipline gone global have its own requirements.
Contrary to what happened in other areas, I had role-models to guide me on the path of becoming a Romanist. Most importantly, in my early age, such a tutelar figure was that of Edward Porębowicz (1862-1937), translator of Divine Comedy into Polish, a connoiseur of Occitan poetry, and a member of the same Polish Academy of Learning where I spent many autumn evenings of my Cracovian life. He was the only person in my cognitive horizon who knew pratically all the Romance languages, as I wanted to know them myself. He was thus a giver of a legacy and a legitimizer of my endeavours, a warrant-giver of their feasibility. Romance philology lured me by its complexity, difficulty, by the expertise it required. What a solid wood of an area!
Of course, having a reading knowledge of all the Romance languages does not appear as such an extraordinary feat in my eyes today - rather as a requirement of the profession. Yet we are not at the same stage any more. Literary studies moved forward, became global, involved in larger spaces - for it was precisely the thrill of extension, of wide horizon that attracted me to Romance philology in such a comparative and multilingual sense as Porębowicz concieved it. Certainly, it was the current understanding at his time in Berlin, Montpellier, Barcelona or Florence, where he studied, but it was not the standard in Poland at the time I came to this.
Be that as it may, soon I started to see the Romance world as one area, and to read the variety of its languages as a minor challenge. The true difficulty awaited me further south and eastwards across the Mediterranean. Yet I started my academic existence rather in trans-Atlantic than trans-Mediterranean terms as my first Romance early-modern specialisation was Portuguese studies. It was also in Lisbon that I read the course in medieval literature offered by João Dionísio, a very solid professor of the University of Lisbon. I always felt attracted to Occitan poetry, but I had no opportunity of studying it at that time either in Poland or in Portugal.
At a given stage of my career, I wrote that I was an autodidact in the domain of Romance medieval and early-modern studies as much as in the Oriental ones. Now I am not so sure if this is true. What do other students get, in Oxford or Harvard or wherever? For a long time I felt I got insufficient, mediocre formation, and suffered the injustice of moving among people who got the best formation available, in leading universities. I could only shut my mouth and try to cope with whatever challenge came in my way.
Nonetheless, in spite of all those doubts and tergiversations, I do have a relatively consistent track record in Romance medieval and early-modern studies across all the years of my academic career, although it is not as dense as I would wish it to be. Initially, I became quite well versed in Portuguese maritime expansion. I wrote papers about it (incidentally, one of my earliest papers on this topic was published in France), and actually it remains one of my strong points till the present day. I studied Portuguese Renaissance more in depth at the time of writing my post-doctoral book (Terrytorium a świat, 2003); but more than a decade later, Imperium i nostalgia (2015) still contains extensive criticism in reference to early modernity. In fact, the typical trait of my writing on pre-modern periods consists, since a long time, in building essayistic, cross-historical approaches. My old paper on political correctness, mixing Montaine and Damião de Góis into the affair, may be an example. Also the research project in 2003-2006, focused on the topic of island, had such a transversal character. Imperium i nostalgia still remains quite in the same vain. Later on, my passion for Giorgio Agamben (as a medievalist, not the theoretician of the state of exception) certainly contributes to these intellectual habits.
My interest in medieval and early-modern studies reached quite a new stage with the Marie-Curie fellowship spent in the Renaissance studies centre in Tours. The search for Adamic language, the topic on which I am still working, has a separate page. Meanwhile, this period of research brought to me quite a new lease of ideas.
Medieval and early-modern studies, just like all other disciplines in literary studies and humanities in the broad sense, have gone global, shifting the accents from traditional, well-polished disciplines such as Romance philology, to uncharted territories, mixing their Eurocentric blood with such disciplines as Oriental studies. Certainly, the traditional approaches have a peculiar charm, that of solid wood darkened with age. Long bibliographies and girlands of footnotes give a sense of legacy and participation in something that comes from behind. The thrill they give is quite different than that of exploring unknown literary territory, somewhere in Africa. It is good to be a Romanist, with a cup of tea on an autumn evening. Yet the discipline gone global have its own requirements.
Contrary to what happened in other areas, I had role-models to guide me on the path of becoming a Romanist. Most importantly, in my early age, such a tutelar figure was that of Edward Porębowicz (1862-1937), translator of Divine Comedy into Polish, a connoiseur of Occitan poetry, and a member of the same Polish Academy of Learning where I spent many autumn evenings of my Cracovian life. He was the only person in my cognitive horizon who knew pratically all the Romance languages, as I wanted to know them myself. He was thus a giver of a legacy and a legitimizer of my endeavours, a warrant-giver of their feasibility. Romance philology lured me by its complexity, difficulty, by the expertise it required. What a solid wood of an area!
Of course, having a reading knowledge of all the Romance languages does not appear as such an extraordinary feat in my eyes today - rather as a requirement of the profession. Yet we are not at the same stage any more. Literary studies moved forward, became global, involved in larger spaces - for it was precisely the thrill of extension, of wide horizon that attracted me to Romance philology in such a comparative and multilingual sense as Porębowicz concieved it. Certainly, it was the current understanding at his time in Berlin, Montpellier, Barcelona or Florence, where he studied, but it was not the standard in Poland at the time I came to this.
Be that as it may, soon I started to see the Romance world as one area, and to read the variety of its languages as a minor challenge. The true difficulty awaited me further south and eastwards across the Mediterranean. Yet I started my academic existence rather in trans-Atlantic than trans-Mediterranean terms as my first Romance early-modern specialisation was Portuguese studies. It was also in Lisbon that I read the course in medieval literature offered by João Dionísio, a very solid professor of the University of Lisbon. I always felt attracted to Occitan poetry, but I had no opportunity of studying it at that time either in Poland or in Portugal.
At a given stage of my career, I wrote that I was an autodidact in the domain of Romance medieval and early-modern studies as much as in the Oriental ones. Now I am not so sure if this is true. What do other students get, in Oxford or Harvard or wherever? For a long time I felt I got insufficient, mediocre formation, and suffered the injustice of moving among people who got the best formation available, in leading universities. I could only shut my mouth and try to cope with whatever challenge came in my way.
Nonetheless, in spite of all those doubts and tergiversations, I do have a relatively consistent track record in Romance medieval and early-modern studies across all the years of my academic career, although it is not as dense as I would wish it to be. Initially, I became quite well versed in Portuguese maritime expansion. I wrote papers about it (incidentally, one of my earliest papers on this topic was published in France), and actually it remains one of my strong points till the present day. I studied Portuguese Renaissance more in depth at the time of writing my post-doctoral book (Terrytorium a świat, 2003); but more than a decade later, Imperium i nostalgia (2015) still contains extensive criticism in reference to early modernity. In fact, the typical trait of my writing on pre-modern periods consists, since a long time, in building essayistic, cross-historical approaches. My old paper on political correctness, mixing Montaine and Damião de Góis into the affair, may be an example. Also the research project in 2003-2006, focused on the topic of island, had such a transversal character. Imperium i nostalgia still remains quite in the same vain. Later on, my passion for Giorgio Agamben (as a medievalist, not the theoretician of the state of exception) certainly contributes to these intellectual habits.
My interest in medieval and early-modern studies reached quite a new stage with the Marie-Curie fellowship spent in the Renaissance studies centre in Tours. The search for Adamic language, the topic on which I am still working, has a separate page. Meanwhile, this period of research brought to me quite a new lease of ideas.
ongoing research
Congregatio mundi today. New perspectives on Guillaume Postel (1510-1581)
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Primerjalna Knijževnost, no 41, 1/2018, p. 191-199. ISSN 2591-1805
https://ojs.zrc-sazu.si/primerjalna_knjizevnost/article/view/6829 The aim of this paper is to reflect on the perspectives of a critical return to certain aspects of the Postelian heritage, while in the recent decades the figure of this heterodox Renaissance thinker has been apparently downgraded from fascinating to merely secondary. Certainly, his equation between intercultural communication and universal concordia remains generally valid to the present day, even for those who do not share his Adamitic and cabbalistic conceptions of language. On the other hand, his concept of congregator mundi appears as a valuable starting point for the discussion on the role and prerogatives of the intellectual as a mediator between human societies and the transcendent sphere, especially if Postel is read in the light of the recent thought of Giorgio Agamben, re-collocating the intellectual and the cultural critic in the line of the monotheistic prophets. 
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“W poszukiwaniu kondycji transkulturowej. António Vieira i Giorgio Agamben jako czytelnicy Listów Pawłowych” [“In search of the transcultural condition. António Vieira and Giorgio Agamben as the readers of Paul's Epistle to the Romans”], Nowy Człowiek: wizje, projekty, języki, Stanisław Jasionowicz (ed.), Kraków, Wydawnictwo UNUM, 2017, p. 47-59. ISBN 978-83-7643-142-0, e-ISBN 978-83-7643-143-7
António Vieira, a seventeenth-century Portuguese Jesuit, heterodox thinker persecuted by the Inquisition, and missionary working in the Brazilian province of Maranhão, stands comparison with Giorgio Agamben as a reader of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. In spite of dissimilar historical circumstances, both ask the crucial questions concerning universalism and may be regarded as theoreticians of the transcultural condition, understood in this essay as a state of naked, prelapsarian humanity beyond any cultural distinction. This primordial undressed condition – Unbekleidetheit that Agamben found in the theology of Erik Peterson – might become available again due to the passage into the eschatological time, the kairós of Paul. As one can imagine, Vieira might have lacked sufficient intellectual freedom to fully verbalize all the implications of his vision of the spiritual Fifth Empire unifying mankind. These silenced views that the inquisitorial archives failed to transmit to our times may be recuperated, at least as a hypothesis, through the confrontation of the two readers of Paul and the reflection on the possible transcultural horizons as well as shortcomings of Vieira’s visionary thought.
António Vieira, a seventeenth-century Portuguese Jesuit, heterodox thinker persecuted by the Inquisition, and missionary working in the Brazilian province of Maranhão, stands comparison with Giorgio Agamben as a reader of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. In spite of dissimilar historical circumstances, both ask the crucial questions concerning universalism and may be regarded as theoreticians of the transcultural condition, understood in this essay as a state of naked, prelapsarian humanity beyond any cultural distinction. This primordial undressed condition – Unbekleidetheit that Agamben found in the theology of Erik Peterson – might become available again due to the passage into the eschatological time, the kairós of Paul. As one can imagine, Vieira might have lacked sufficient intellectual freedom to fully verbalize all the implications of his vision of the spiritual Fifth Empire unifying mankind. These silenced views that the inquisitorial archives failed to transmit to our times may be recuperated, at least as a hypothesis, through the confrontation of the two readers of Paul and the reflection on the possible transcultural horizons as well as shortcomings of Vieira’s visionary thought.
| w_poszukiwaniu_kondycji.pdf |
ongoing research
extracultural becoming in the middle ages and early modernity
My involvement in medieval and early modern studies appears as absolutely central for my work on extracultural becoming of man, because I believe that transhistorical existence of the phenomenon is even more persuasive for my argumentation that whatever might issue out of the contemporary cultural criticism. It is a matter of mysticisms and heterodox ideas much more than a product of globalisation.
As an initial hypothesis, I admitted that it is in al-Andalus that one should seek for the origins of many things that are important for my project. Yet the penetration of such ideas into the Christian world, the undercurrents of thought they become, often in secrecy imposed by the dominant orthodoxies, makes yet another, fascinating story. The idea of unity of the Abrahamic tradition is by no means an obvious thing across the Middle Ages, that saw the Saracen world as something essentially alien. It is obvious to us that the diverse monotheistic religions originated from the same stem over the span of early, mature, late and very late Antiquity (the idea of considering Islam as a product of Antiquity that lingers in the desert peripheries of the Mediterranean world is not quite novel). But in the Middle Ages such a historical perspective was obviously lacking. The trans-denominational truth about God was a revolution for which one man, Ramon Llull, was greatly responsible. And even, he stopped in the middle of the way, never daring to draw the utmost consequences of his own revolutionary idea. At the time of Postel, it was still a highly controversial intellectual problem, as it went against the divergence founding the very existence of religions as separate symbolic spheres and the Church as an exclusive institution.
With our present, transcultural stance, in a Europe that is half Christian, half-Muslim, we are back to the Cordoban context of the first half of the 13th century. Perhaps the truncated story of al-Andalus contributes to the solution of our contemporary problems. But there is no use in reflecting on where we would be now if the history had taken a different turn...
Anyway this project implies a return to the peculiarity of western Mediterranean thinkers. The adjectival expression "western Mediterranean" is more than just an accident of speech. The expanse of a sea dictates the basic coordinates, forming a matrix for subsequent processes, such as the (in)communicability of Latin and Greek worlds, and the space of mediation, filled through the Arabic. The stake, the conclusion to which I look forward concerns the consciousness of Europe looking back to its Mediterranean past to see a unity of civilisation. The perspective is to reconsider the West in terms of a "western Mediterranean". This return to the pre-modern presupposes thus a closing of the Atlantic expansion initiated in the 15th century. Only the final exhaustion of a late, very late modernity presupposes such a move. Nonetheless, I believe the time is nigh.
As an initial hypothesis, I admitted that it is in al-Andalus that one should seek for the origins of many things that are important for my project. Yet the penetration of such ideas into the Christian world, the undercurrents of thought they become, often in secrecy imposed by the dominant orthodoxies, makes yet another, fascinating story. The idea of unity of the Abrahamic tradition is by no means an obvious thing across the Middle Ages, that saw the Saracen world as something essentially alien. It is obvious to us that the diverse monotheistic religions originated from the same stem over the span of early, mature, late and very late Antiquity (the idea of considering Islam as a product of Antiquity that lingers in the desert peripheries of the Mediterranean world is not quite novel). But in the Middle Ages such a historical perspective was obviously lacking. The trans-denominational truth about God was a revolution for which one man, Ramon Llull, was greatly responsible. And even, he stopped in the middle of the way, never daring to draw the utmost consequences of his own revolutionary idea. At the time of Postel, it was still a highly controversial intellectual problem, as it went against the divergence founding the very existence of religions as separate symbolic spheres and the Church as an exclusive institution.
With our present, transcultural stance, in a Europe that is half Christian, half-Muslim, we are back to the Cordoban context of the first half of the 13th century. Perhaps the truncated story of al-Andalus contributes to the solution of our contemporary problems. But there is no use in reflecting on where we would be now if the history had taken a different turn...
Anyway this project implies a return to the peculiarity of western Mediterranean thinkers. The adjectival expression "western Mediterranean" is more than just an accident of speech. The expanse of a sea dictates the basic coordinates, forming a matrix for subsequent processes, such as the (in)communicability of Latin and Greek worlds, and the space of mediation, filled through the Arabic. The stake, the conclusion to which I look forward concerns the consciousness of Europe looking back to its Mediterranean past to see a unity of civilisation. The perspective is to reconsider the West in terms of a "western Mediterranean". This return to the pre-modern presupposes thus a closing of the Atlantic expansion initiated in the 15th century. Only the final exhaustion of a late, very late modernity presupposes such a move. Nonetheless, I believe the time is nigh.
open topics and their medieval and early-modern protagonists
The medievalist work to be done in my extracultural project consists in bringing back to light a continuity of minor, heterodox traditions in which some traces of such experiences might be found. This is once again rather a Mediterranean than strictly Romance field of research, yet I suppose there is a point of convergence here. If the distinctness of orthodoxies breaks the monotheistic unity, the plurality of mystical heterodoxies blurs the frontiers and advocates for the return of convergence. Just as it will be visible in my research on Guillaume Postel.
AL-ANDALUS
A variety of Andalusian thinkers may be contemplated in this research, just as their fame crosses the denominational frontier already in the Middle Ages. Ibn Arabi is evidently a closing key figure, but there is a longer thread of tradition coming from behind. It includes Ibn Bajja and Ibn Tufail, and the Andalusian reflection on social and communitarian condition of man. The origins of the elitist though, distinguishing between the illuminated and the mass of common believers may be translated in terms of coexistence between the extracultural insight of the illuminated few and the cultural existence of the vast majorities of the faithful.
RAMON LLULL
What I'm equally interested in, is the collapse of the idea of unity, such as it can be observed in Ramon Llull. Ars lulliana, as a universalist tool of discovering and communicating truth, falls short of its own universalism. The project of conversion degenerates into a project of crusade. The personal failure of the Mallorcan thinker is at the same time a failure of Europe that, thence as now, falls short of its own aspiration of universalism.
GUILLAUME POSTEL
The advocate of the universal concordia is an important figure in my gallery of the restitutors of the broken unity.
ANTÓNIO VIEIRA
Another figure in this gallery, a late comer, is the Portuguese Jesuit priest António Vieira. Once again, its all about universalism, yet perhaps a deficient vision of it. Working as a missionary in the Brazilian province of Maranhão, Vieira gained a very deep insight into the cultural difference. In Clavis Profetarum, his monumental work on the history of the missions, he established an interesting vision of a struggle between a supposedly universal symbolic system (Christianity) and the cultured condition of man.
AL-ANDALUS
A variety of Andalusian thinkers may be contemplated in this research, just as their fame crosses the denominational frontier already in the Middle Ages. Ibn Arabi is evidently a closing key figure, but there is a longer thread of tradition coming from behind. It includes Ibn Bajja and Ibn Tufail, and the Andalusian reflection on social and communitarian condition of man. The origins of the elitist though, distinguishing between the illuminated and the mass of common believers may be translated in terms of coexistence between the extracultural insight of the illuminated few and the cultural existence of the vast majorities of the faithful.
RAMON LLULL
What I'm equally interested in, is the collapse of the idea of unity, such as it can be observed in Ramon Llull. Ars lulliana, as a universalist tool of discovering and communicating truth, falls short of its own universalism. The project of conversion degenerates into a project of crusade. The personal failure of the Mallorcan thinker is at the same time a failure of Europe that, thence as now, falls short of its own aspiration of universalism.
GUILLAUME POSTEL
The advocate of the universal concordia is an important figure in my gallery of the restitutors of the broken unity.
ANTÓNIO VIEIRA
Another figure in this gallery, a late comer, is the Portuguese Jesuit priest António Vieira. Once again, its all about universalism, yet perhaps a deficient vision of it. Working as a missionary in the Brazilian province of Maranhão, Vieira gained a very deep insight into the cultural difference. In Clavis Profetarum, his monumental work on the history of the missions, he established an interesting vision of a struggle between a supposedly universal symbolic system (Christianity) and the cultured condition of man.
The quest for the knowable and symbolic transgression in Camões's The Lusiads
The Lusiads is to be read as a text of a twilight. It should be situated in relation to the historical process of Portuguese maritime discoveries as a conclusion, the result of an intellectual processing of the experiences of an entire era, roughly covering over a century and a half (from the first half of the fifteenth century to 1572). Camões’s masterpiece narrating the discovery of the maritime passage from Europe to India by Vasco da Gama is obviously a glance back. It refers to the events that took place during a voyage that lasted from 1497 to 1499. It marks not the beginning but the end of the greatest period of Portuguese maritime adventure. It is tainted with a melancholic awareness of shortcomings and chances lost, haunted with the presentment of an end. Arguably, such an end actually happened at the moment of the childless death of D. Sebastião that brought about a dynastic crisis, but also pushed the Portuguese out of the pragmatic and experimental vein of the maritime expansion into a phantasmal mood of existence. Portuguese life went on under the yoke of Inquisition stifling the impetus of intellectual and ideological revolutions brought about by the maritime discoveries. Yet on the other hand, the aura of an end in The Lusiads may also be inherent to the epic genre. As Frank Kermode wrote in a classical essay (The Sense of an Ending), the progress of Aeneas may be resumed as a passage from a broken city to a new one, beyond any end, as Rome would stand for an eternal empire. It is thus close to the apocalyptic and millenarian scheme in which “ends are consonant with origins” and the episodes narrated “all exist under the shadow of the end.” Vasco da Gama narrating the origins in his speech to the King of Melinde will strive to close the cycle, to see the end, as he will actually do while receiving his enlightenment on the mountain peak of the Island of Love. At the same time, one may feel that The Lusiads, rich in prophetical discourse--even if it is repeatedly put in the mouth of an antique deity, Jove or Tethys--is a prefiguration of the millenarian thought of António Vieira transforming Portugal into the Fifth Empire.
selected papers in Romance literatures
El erotismo aporético de Ausiàs March
"The aporetic eroticism of Ausiàs March", Estudios Hispanicos, XXII, 2014, p. 71-81. ISSN 2084-2546
The poetry of Ausiàs March illustrates not only the emergence and affirmation of Catalan literature from the Romance continuum, but also the crisis of the European consciousness at the beginning of the early-modern era. The rupture in relation to the Occitan poetic tradition implies a reevaluation of love in a larger context of human life, which is determined by moral and epistemological pessimism. The supposed “misogyny” of the Valentian poet reflects his general attitude towards the human condition, which is unworthy of the ideal, deficient, finite and prone to frustration. The birth of the saturnine eroticism, immersed in its own contradictions, leads to the consciousness dominated by the dependence of man on God.
The poetry of Ausiàs March illustrates not only the emergence and affirmation of Catalan literature from the Romance continuum, but also the crisis of the European consciousness at the beginning of the early-modern era. The rupture in relation to the Occitan poetic tradition implies a reevaluation of love in a larger context of human life, which is determined by moral and epistemological pessimism. The supposed “misogyny” of the Valentian poet reflects his general attitude towards the human condition, which is unworthy of the ideal, deficient, finite and prone to frustration. The birth of the saturnine eroticism, immersed in its own contradictions, leads to the consciousness dominated by the dependence of man on God.
| el_erotismo_aporetico.pdf |
O tempo, a transgressão e o conhecimento na História do Futuro do Padre António Vieira
"Time, transgression and knowledge in História do Futuro, by Padre António Vieira", Romanica Cracoviensia, 4/2004, p. 83-93. ISSN 1732-8705; ISBN 83-233-1854-9
| tempo_transgressao_conhecimento.pdf |
international journals of medieval & early-modern studies
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Parergon publishes articles on all aspects of medieval and early modern studies. We are especially interested in material that crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries and takes new approaches. Parergon asks its authors to achieve international standards of excellence. The article should be substantially original, advance research in the field, and have the potential to make a significant contribution to the critical debate.
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