Overview

The first volume of critical essays on the contemporary Portuguese novel in English, this book theorizes the concept of the ‘hypercontemporary’ as a way of reading the novel after its postmodern period. This inquiry into the notion of the hypercontemporary in its literary and cultural articulations analyzes a varied group of works representative of the most vibrant novels published in Portugal since 2000. The editors’ introductory chapter theorizes the concept of the hypercontemporary as one way of looking at the novel after its postmodern period – especially in its relation to questions of violence, memory and performativity. These essays show how the Portuguese novel has evolved in the past 25 years, and how, in their diversity, most of these novels exhibit several common traits, including new topics and writing strategies – sometimes developing further entropic lines characteristic of many Postmodern narratives – and themes of violence, rapid transformation, and the many threats to a contemporary world that seems mass-produced due to greater technological advances. Readings also discuss the use of innovative graphic forms available from current print technologies and global networks. The Hypercontemporary Novel in Portugal provides a necessary understanding of the current literary landscape of Portugal and, in the process, the aesthetics of hyperrealism or post-postmodernism.

Full Product Details

Author:   Dr. or Prof. Paulo de Medeiros (University of Warwick, UK) ,  Dr. or Prof. Ana Paula Arnaut (University of Coimbra, Portugal)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:  

9798765100318

Pages:   192
Publication Date:   08 February 2024
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

List of Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Ana Paula Arnaut (University of Coimbra, Portugal) and Paulo de Medeiros (University of Warwick, UK) Part I. Intermediality, Intertextuality, and Self-Reflexivity in the Hypercontemporary Novel 1. The Page as a Hyperfictional Hypothesis in New Portuguese Literature: Patrícia Portela and Joana Bértholo, a Case Study Sofia Madalena G. Escourido (University of Coimbra, Portugal) 2. Astronomia by Mário Cláudio: Memory, Intermediality, and the Cosmic Imagination João Faustino (University of Warwick, UK) 3. Sketching Gnaisse: The Process of Reading a Metamorphic Novel Daniela Côrtes Maduro (University of Coimbra, Portugal) 4. Representations of Elsewhere and New Forms of Dystopia in Hypercontemporary Portuguese Literature Silvia Amorim (Bordeaux Montaigne University, France) 5. Charon Awaits: Do All Things Come to Those Who Wait? Ana Isabel Martins (University of Rennes, France) Part II. Memory and Post-Memory in the Hypercontemporary Novel 6. 'What's in a Name?' Reading the Hypercontemporary Isabel Cristina Rodrigues (University of Aveiro, Portugal) 7. Paulo Faria’s Wars: Owning Experience, Violence, and Postmemory Felipe Cammaert (University of Coimbra, Portugal) 8. The Attraction of Autofiction in Contra mim: Paths and Chasms of Memory José Vieira (University of Coimbra, Portugal) 9. The Shattered Narrative of Mafalda Ivo Cruz Paulo Ricardo Kralik Angelini and Samla Borges Canilha (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) 10. Of Technology and Lost Connections.: A Decolonial Approach to As Telefones by Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida as a Hypercontemporary Novel Emanuelle Santos (University of Birmingham, UK) 11. Through a Glass Darkly: Violence, Intimacy, and Memory in Dulce Maria Cardoso Paulo de Medeiros (University of Warwick, UK) Index

Reviews

The unrelenting violence of our time is neither intermittent nor antagonistic to literary form as such – so argue the authors of The Hypercontemporary Novel in Portugal. Quite the contrary, twenty-first century violence is a process of continuous, indeed accelerating transformation that must be considered a form in its own right. This form distinguishes the work of contemporary Portuguese novelists as “hypercontemporary.' Key to this periodizing gesture is the idea that the very destruction of form rises to the level of a form as it produces a world where geography disappears and any identifiable form becomes precarious. That even the most tenacious forms of nostalgia cannot survive in such a novel demonstrates how, in the present moment, novels and their readers are still reliving a fascistic and colonial past. A truly remarkable collection! * Nancy Armstrong, Gilbert, Louis, and Edward Professor of Trinity College, Duke University, USA * Although the adjective 'hypercontemporary' has begun to appear in association with recently published literature, novels in particular, its descriptive value leaves a lot to be desired. A new generation of Portuguese novelists have been cultivating aesthetic practices that may be said to substantiate the term beyond an abstract temporal meaning. The essays gathered in this book by Paulo de Medeiros and Ana Paula Arnaut discuss some of those practices as they introduce readers to a cross-section of novelistic works that take further and, in some cases, radically transform models inherited from late twentieth-century masters of the genre in Portugal, namely José Saramago, António Lobo Antunes and Lídia Jorge. Many of the articles engage with and expand upon a watershed article on the hypercontemporary novel published by Arnaut in 2018. Be it through formal and narrative strategies, for example, explorations in intermediality and intertextuality, or due to the insistence with which novelists confront the many forms of violence ubiquitous in today’s world, contributors to the volume offer an illuminating applied introduction to a critical concept that unfolds from article to article resisting fixity. At the same time, they present a focused critical introduction to the Portuguese novel in what transpires of the twentieth-first century. An original and much-needed contribution, the present volume may hopefully encourage further critical reflections on hypercontemporary novels produced in other languages and geo-cultural spaces. * Ana Paula Ferreira, Professor of Portuguese Studies, University of Minnesota, USA * The Hypercontemporary Novel in Portugal, is an insightful, rich, lucid, thought-provoking, stimulating and a pathbreaking book that explores fictional aesthetics and memory after postmodernism. This is a unique and potentially transformative book that will have wide appeal for scholars and will impact different disciplines. It is a must have book to truly understand the current literary landscape of Portugal. * José N. Ornelas, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA * Through the discussion of the hyper-contemporary period and its impact on literature, this book discusses the contemporary intermedial novel of the Portuguese-speaking world, its themes and aesthetic specificities, and questions canonical views of literature. The Hypercontemporary Novel in Portugal thus represents a landmark in the reflection on the hyper-contemporary novel written in Portuguese, when treatments of the topic are sparse in Portuguese and non-existent in English. * Adriana Martins, Associate Professor of Culture Studies, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon, Portugal *

Author Information

Ana Paula Arnaut is Professor of Portuguese Contemporary Literature at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. She is a member of the Centre of Portuguese Literature, and her main fields of research are postmodernism and hypercontemporary in Portuguese Literature, colonial and postcolonial studies, and women’s studies. She has published several books and articles both in national and international journals. Paulo de Medeiros is Professor of Modern & Contemporary World Literatures in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Previously he held the Chair of Portuguese Studies at Utrecht, the Netherlands, and was President of the American Portuguese Studies Association. He is co-editor of a volume of essays on Luso-African film (2021) and author of two books on Fernando Pessoa, besides work on comparative literature.

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