Um ‘quase-africano:’ Re-significações de Fradique Mendes em Nação crioula, de José Eduardo Agualusa

Lígia Bezerra

doi:10.21471/jls.v13i0.5

Lígia Bezerra Spelman College

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21471/jls.v13i0.5

Keywords: post-modernism, parody, novel, Angola, , metafiction

Abstract

In this article, I present Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa’s Nação crioula: A correspondência secreta de Fradique Mendes (1997) as a post-modern parody of the ctional character Fradique Mendes from Eça de Queirós’ A correspondência de Fradique Mendes (1900). Through parody, Agualusa creates historiographic metafiction meant to question the possibility of objective representations of reality, an issue central to post-modern aesthetics. I further propose that this questioning extends a discussion that is already suggested by Eça’s original text at the turn of the twentieth century, when concerns about the possibility of objective representations of reality also came to the fore.

Author Biography

Lígia Bezerra, Spelman College

Ligia Bezerra is an Assistant Professor of Portuguese at Spelman College. She received her doctorate from Indiana University, and she holds degrees from the University of New Mexico and the Universidade Federal do Ceará. Her research focuses on contemporary ction in Portuguese and Spanish, particularly Latin American literature, with articles published in Chasqui and Estudos de Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea.