Abstract

KANAN, Raquel Urroz. The meaning of the journey and the landscape in Saramago. Finisterra [online]. 2021, n.116, pp.3-18.  Epub Apr 30, 2021. ISSN 0430-5027.  https://doi.org/10.18055/finis19255.

José Saramago is a central figure of Portuguese Literature. The Portuguese laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature wanted to consolidate his personal and cultural identity to defend his moral position towards his country and the rest of the world. Through an itinerary accompanied by collected experiences and impressions, Saramago made a journey through the lands of his country, which was written and published in 1980 in the form of a travel book with the title Viagem a Portugal (Journey to Portugal). It will be possible in this work to trace his way of seeing and feeling the Portuguese landscape and reveal the deeper meaning of the connections with his vital spaces such as: the village, the capital, and the national territory. Is it also possible to know his “cartographic memory” mainly formed by Portuguese literature, by the memories of personal experiences and by his aesthetic tastes of art. Finally, what spatial image contributes to the reading of José Saramago’s journey when translating it into cartographic language? This article explores Saramago’s geographic notion of Portugal’s territory and landscape from his concept of journey, to unravel the elements that make up the space system that he intellectually wove guided by his “curiosity cartographic”, of which a cultural geography, from his perspective, was composed mainly of rivers, mountains, stones, and history.

Keywords : Saramago; Portugal; journey; landscape..

        · abstract in Spanish | Portuguese | French     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )