Esplendor de Portugal, oscuridad de Angola: la historia desde la memoria

Abstract

Splendor of Portugal, novel written by Antonio Lobo Antunes, presents the history of Angola's independence and the return of the Portugueses to Lisbon (retornados), as a metaphor of the colonial collapse (history), from the subjectivity (the memory) of the characters. The fictional strategies disclose that the novel does not depict a historical narrative, but personal story. The study of the narrative, discursive and thematic structures is based on elements of the Possible Worlds Theory, as well as Bakhtin´s conceptions of chronotope and polyphony. The historical analysis allows us to observe that time is the axis of the narrative structure of the novel and, at the same time, allows us to understand the way in which historical events are used to build a literary world. This research reveals that the fictionalization process and the aesthetics of the novel are supported not only on the memory of the characters, but on the real and internal time. Protagonists are psychically and spatially delocalized. This delocalized feeling causes them loss they identity and turn them in to the retornados. Other characteristics are the discursive fragmentation, the temporal discontinuities of the story, and the delirious memory of the characters. The novel uses metaphors, thematizations, dialogues and typographic strategies to create a literary language. These devices express the linguistic beauty to emphasize a contrast with the sordid theme of the novel, in order to achieve an aesthetic balance.