Anglo-Portuguese Studies n.27

[show_more color=”#666666″ more=”Show More” less=”Show Less”]The magnificent edifice of Batalha enjoys an outstanding position primarily due to the importance attributed to it by the architect James Murphy, who was amply studied by Ana Rita de Sá Soveral Padeira in Uma Visão Artística de Portugal. James Murphy e a sua Obra (1986), and by William Beckford, a ‘canonical figure’ in the field of Anglo-Portuguese relations, particularly after the publication of Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires’ William Beckford e Portugal. Uma Visão Diferente do Homem e do Escritor (1987). Pedro Redol, who has recently published a study of the subject (Batalha: Viagem a um Mosteiro Desaparecido com James Murphy e William Beckford, 2011), relives the interest that this masterpiece of Portuguese architecture provoked in the mind of the English writer in “William Beckford e o Mosteiro da Batalha”. Curiously, we learn from John Clark and José Baptista de Sousa in “A Portuguese Garden in Kensington” that Lord Holland, when designing the gardens for his London mansion house, was influenced by his love for Portugal in the same way that Beckford was inspired by Batalha when he built Fonthill Abbey.

From the earliest times Portugal’s capital was the destination of travellers who wished to find a cure for their sufferings – of a physical and, on occasion, psychological character – in a pleasant climate away from a social environment which they sometimes considered more repressive. We owe a number of well-known and well-studied accounts to such causes, but the influence on Mary Wollstonecraft of her visit to Lisbon is something of a novelty, as revealed in Rogério Puga’s “Ficcionalizar Lisboa como ‘Colónia’ Britânica de Convalescença: a Estética do Sofrimento Feminino em Mary, A Fiction (1788), de Mary Wollstonecraft”. The relationship of the celebrated English writer (one of the first defenders of the rights of women in Britain) with Portugal is also the subject of Catarina Correia de Castro’s “Mary Wollstonecraft e a sua (Re)Visão de Portugal em The Analytical Review”, a study of Wollstonecraft’s critical review, published in the New York Review in 1788, of Sketches of Society and Manners in Portugal by Arthur William Costigan, which was reproduced in full in an appendix to her article.

The American writer Mary McCarthy also visited Lisbon, at the height of the Estado Novo regime, on her way to New York, later publishing her impressions of the city in different magazines. In his article, “Uma Americana em Lisboa: Mary McCarthy ‘traduz’ Portugal (1954)”, Mário Cruz writes about the very particular way in which McCarthy ‘translates’ Portugal for the North-American public. Portuguese-American relationships are examined from an entirely different angle in Reinaldo Francisco Silva’s article “The Rhetoric of Eugenics and the Portuguese in New England: a Case Study”, which deals with Portuguese immigration to New England and North-American perspectives on the immigrants, which, in the first decades of the twentieth century, were inspired by pseudo-theories on eugenics.

Like Mary Wollstonecraft, Júlio Dinis enjoys particular attention in this issue, with two articles dedicated to his literary production: in “Júlio Dinis Anglófilo? Interrogações, Perplexidades, Desafios”, Miguel Alarcão examines the writer’s anglophilia whilst in “Júlio Dinis’s Picture Postcards of Multi-Cultural Portugal”, Hazel Robbins discusses the role of such topical questions as identity, class, nationality and multiculturalism in Dinis’s work.

Whilst much work has already been based around the interplay of Imagology with Translation Studies within the programmes of the first degree and Masters degree courses in Translation of the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and in respective dissertations, in their recent book Interconnecting Translation Studies and Imagology (2015) Luc van Doorslaer, Peter Flyn e Joep Leerssen have provided a theoretical basis for such interaction, arguing that translations (de)construct stereotypes, identities, nationalisms – offering images of the Other which reflect the concerns of the Self. Taking these premises as her point of departure, Sara Lepori, in her article “Images of Portugal Between Prestage’s Lines: the Translations of Eça de Queirós’s O Suave Milagre and O Defunto” analyses the image of Portugal as conveyed by the eminent British lusophile in his translations of certain of the works of Eça de Queirós. The well-known Portuguese novelist, journalist and social chronicler is also the subject of Teresa Pinto Coelho’s “Da Abertura do Canal do Suez ao Ultimatum: o Egipto e o Imperialismo Britânico Vistos por Eça de Queirós”, focussing, as the title suggests, on Eça’s attitude towards British imperialism.

The intersection of Translation Studies with Anglo-Portuguese Studies is also patent in Ricardo Marques’ article “Sylvester Rosa Koehler, Antero’s Translator. Six Forgotten Translations” which examines hitherto unknown English translations of six of Antero de Quental’s sonnets.

In “Watson, Foi Você Quem Matou o Policial?”, Maikon Augusto Delgado attributes a prominent role in the transformation of the crime novel as a literary (sub)genre to Fernando Pessoa, whose influence from English-speaking authors is well-known. He argues that Pessoa made a significant contribution to the genre, which was pioneered by Edgar Allen Poe and successfully reinvented by Arthur Conan Doyle, by altering the horizon of expectation of its readers. Whilst in this article the Anglo-Portuguese perspective derives from the proximity of Pessoa and Poe’s notions of the crime novel, in Joana Meirim’s article it is the similarity between the personality traits, literary projects and notions on life of Philip Larkin and Alexandre O’ Neill, as well as their common ideas on poetry and their relationship with their readers which provides the link.

In the history of Anglo-Portuguese relations certain figures and events stand out due to the fact that, for different reasons, they brought greater approximation between the two allied nations. Amongst the first was Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese Princess and Queen of England, who has been the subject of several articles in previous issues of REAP/JAPS. Here Maria da Conceição Emiliano Castel-Branco dedicates her article, entitled “(Re)Descobrir D. Catarina de Bragança: Variações de um Caso Anglo-Português em Romances Históricos do Século XX em Língua Inglesa”, to fictional narratives, published in the twentieth century, which revolve around this distinguished figure, a clear sign of the topical interest in Catherine’s seventeenth-century role. The Peninsular War has, in its turn, been the focus of study for several researchers since the 1986-1987 Masters Degree Course in Anglo-Portuguese Studies, leading to dissertations, anthologies of translations, conferences and publications of different kinds from 1990 to the present, particularly during the 200th anniversary commemorations of the French Invasions (2017-2012). The topic appears to be far from exhausted, however, as the article by Paula Alexandra Guimarães reveals – “The Rescue of Lusia by Albion: Representations of Portugal in British Women’s Peninsular War Poetry” –, which, as its title suggests, looks at poetry written by women on the theme of the Peninsular War. By way of contrast, much remains to be studied as far as relations between Britain and Portugal in the period between the Ultimatum of 1890 and the First World War are concerned, with the exception of an anthology of excerpts concerning the Regicide and the First Republic – Regicídio e República. Olhares Britânicos e Norte-Americanos (2010) – and certain research works on this period, some of which are the fruit of the Masters Degree programme in Anglo-Portuguese Studies. Consequently, the article written by António Lopes entitled “War Abroad and War Within: a British Military Officer’s View of Portugal’s Revolution of 1917” is an important contribution, not only because of the discovery of an unpublished text, but also because it offers an image of Portugal during the First World War as seen by a British officer.

Although questions of a scientific character have been less frequently dealt with within the scope of Anglo-Portuguese Studies, they undoubtedly have a place in this multidisciplinary area of study. The article by Gilberto Pereira “Os Instrumentos de Edward Marmaduke Clarke na Universidade de Coimbra” is an important contribution towards an understanding of how Portuguese scientists and researchers were alert to the scientific and technological innovations produced in Britain at the time of the Industrial Revolution, whilst offering new information for the History of Science based on archival research.

We hope that the next twenty five years of REAP/JAPS, which can now count upon a new member and peer reviewer on its editorial committee, Professor Paulo de Medeiros of Warwick University, will be as fruitful as the last and that the Journal will continue to promote the work of all those who devote themselves, either wholly or in part, to the study of Anglo-Portuguese relations.

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