Portuguese Course Descriptions Fall 2005
Portuguese 36l
Professor Ellen Sapega
Portuguese Civilization
This is an upper-level undergraduate and graduate course designed to provide
students with a deeper understanding of Portuguese culture and society
from the Middle Ages to the present. A variety of instructional materials
(one text book, a packet of photocopies, music, videotapes, slides) will
be used in the course. The course examines such topics as Portugal’s
history and religion, education, the discoveries, cuisine, the arts, colonization
and decolonization, and contemporary politics. Taught in English, the
format is lecture and discussion. The fourth credit hour, however, will
be taught in Portuguese. During the discussion session, we will comment
on the material studied in class, working specifically on questions related
to the Portuguese language (vocabulary, definitions, grammar, etc.). In
addition to two oral presentations and a take-home mid-term exam, students
will complete a final research project.
Required Text:
David Birmingham, A Concise History of Portugal. Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1993.
Portuguese 411
Professor Kathryn Sanchez
Survey of Portuguese Literature before 1825
Advanced survey of Portuguese literature from 1140 to 1825.
Portuguese 640
Professor Luís Madureira
Cannibal Modernities: Antropofagia in Brazilian Literature and Culture
The ephemeral period which encompasses the rise and fall of Antropofagia
as a literary movement (1928-9) is still regarded by some critics as the
most radical of modernista attempts to redefine Brazil’s national
culture and identity, that is, the redundant originality of a “Brazilian
Brazil.” Forever and inevitably linked with its major “prophet”
(Oswald de Andrade), Antropofagia represents the last in a series of avant-garde
movements initiated by the Semana de Arte Moderna held at São Paulo’s
Municipal Theater in the second week of February 1922—an event which,
according to the Uruguayan critic Angel Rama, marks the formal opening
of the modernist epoch in Latin America.
Although it has also been dismissed by at least one prominent Brazilian
critic (Roberto Schwarz) as a nationalist abstraction, an empty analogy
that “throws absolutely no light on the politics and aesthetics
of contemporary cultural life,” the movement arguably continues
to resonate culturally. Its scope exceeds any literary-historical account,
for throughout the last century antropofagista ethics as well as its aesthetics
have impacted significantly not only upon literature, but music, painting
and cinema at crucial moments of Brazil’s cultural life. We will
thus look closely at the intricate relation between antropofagia’s
“project” and modernism in general. Moving beyond a critique
of antropofagia’s undeniable dependency on the very European models
it attempts to displace, we will seek to ascertain the extent to which
the movement may call into question what Paulo Freire has designated as
a “sectarian” idea of modernity “founding itself on
universal, exclusive truths.” We will ask the question whether antropofagia
may be considered at once a “postmodern” and “peripheral”
alternative to hegemonic models of modernity and modernism.
The reading list for this course remains a work in progress, but here’s
a preview. Aside from the so-called “classics” of antropofagia
(Hans Staden’s 1557 captivity narrative, Jean de Léry’s
1578 Histoire), as well as the foundational texts (Oswald’s 1928
“Manifesto antropofágico” and “Manifesto Pau-Brasil”
(1924), the Revista de Antropofagia [1928-9], Mário de Andrade’s
Macunaíma [1927] and Raul Bopp’s Cobra Norato [1932]), we
will read fragments from other lesser-known contemporaneous texts such
as Nhengaçú verde-amarelo and Cassiano Ricardo’s Martim-Cererê).
Our readings will also encompass influential critical assessments of the
movement and its wider impact by Haroldo de Campos, Roberto Schwartz,
Renato Ortiz, Angel Rama and Néstor García-Canclini, among
others. In the latter part of the course, we will examine more recent
“manifestations” of the movement, including two landmark films
from the cinema novo movement (Como era gostoso o meu francês [1971]
and Macunaíma [1969]), the “tropicalist revival,” and
finally three recent novels: José Roberto Torero and Marcus Aurelius
Pimenta’s Terra Papagalli, Glauco Ortolano’s Domingos Vera
Cruz: Memórias de um Antropófago Lisboense no Brasil, and
an excerpt from João Ubaldo Ribeiro’s Viva o Povo Brasileiro.
Portuguese 707
Staff
Portuguese M.A. Proseminar
This course is designed to give new graduate students essential training
in bibliography and research methods as well as exposure to faculty in
the areas of Portuguese, Brazilian, and Lusophone African literature and
linguistics.
Portuguese 751
Professor Severino Albuquerque
Teatro Brasileiro Moderno
This graduate seminar examines major twentieth-century Brazilian plays
in their socio-political context. Attention is given to autochthonous
traditions as well as outside influences such as Artaud’s theater
of cruelty, Brecht’s epic theater, the theater of the Absurd, and
theater as game, ritual and role-playing. The work of contemporary stage
directors and leading theater groups is also examined. Students are expected
to read a considerable number of plays and critical and theoretical writings,
participate actively in discussion, give in-class reports, develop a semester-long
project and write a substantial term paper ideally related to the semester
project.
Readings include:
Primary works:
Jorge Andrade, Marta, a árvore e o relógio.
Oswald de Andrade, Teatro (Obras completas, vol. 8)
Leilah Assunção, Da fala ao grito.
Augusto Boal and G. Guarnieri, Arena conta Tiradentes.
Alfredo Dias Gomes, O pagador de promessas.
Chico Buarque and Paulo Pontes, Gota d’água.
Chico Buarque and Ruy Guerra, Calabar.
Gianfrancesco Guarieri, O melhor teatro de G. Guarnieri.
Plínio Marcos, Navalha na carne and Dois perdidos numa noite suja.
João Cabral de Melo Neto, Morte e vida severina.
Nelson Rodrigues, Teatro completo.
Ariano Suassuna, Auto da compadecida.
Oduvaldo Vianna Filho, Rasga coração.
Theory and Criticism:
S. J. Albuquerque, “The Brazilian Theater in the Twentieth Century.”
The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature. Vol. 3. Chapter 13.
Antonin Artaud, The Theater and its Double.
Augusto Boal, Teatro do oprimido e outras poéticas políticas.
Ruy Castro, O anjo pornográfico: A vida de Nelson Rodrigues.
Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd.
David George, The Modern Brazilian Stage and Grupo Macunaíma.
Alberto Guzik, Crônica de um sonho: O Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia.
Sábato Magaldi, Moderna dramaturgia brasileira and Teatro como
ruptura.
Carmine Martuscello, O teatro de Nelson Rodrigues.
Yan Michalski, Ziembinsky.
Décio de Almeida Prado, O teatro brasileiro moderno, 1930-1980
and Exercício findo.
Armando Sérgio da Silva, Oficina, do teatro ao te-ato.
