Memorial do convento: the historical novel meets the greek tragedy

Abstract

This article is based on the hypothesis that José Saramago's historical novel, Memorial do convento, published in 1982, displays some traits of the Greek tragedy that contribute to the development of paths to a new comprehension of historical novel, expanding the reader's perception of the genre, through reflections elicited by the literary references implied in the novel. From this perspective, and with the aim of bringing the concepts of Greek tragedy closer to the historical novel composed by Saramago, we are going to look into the concepts developed by the Austrian historian Albin Lesky (2003), who in his work The Greek tragedy perceives the tragic as a philosophical principle that reveals a specific outlook on the world. Supporting the reflections proposed here, we also mention some arguments of the French historian Jean-Pierre Vernant (2006), those which, intertwined with Alcmeno Bastos’s (2007) perception of historical novel and Benedito Nunes’s (2003) perception of romanticism, concur with the arguments of Terry Eagleton (2013). In Brazil, Teresa Cristina Cerdeira da Silva (2018), one of the greatest researchers of Saramago's work, is another reference to our analysis, since some of her studies suggest a thought-provoking approximation between Memorial do convento and certain aspects of tragedy.