PELOS TRILHOS DA HISTÓRIA : IMAGENS DA CULTURA CHINESA EM A QUINTA ESSÊNCIA DE AGUSTINA BESSA LUÍS歷史留踪：阿古斯蒂納‧貝薩路易斯小說《第五質》中的中國文化圖像
The article analyzes how Agustina Bessa-Luís, in *A Quinta Essência* (1999), constructs images of Chinese culture through the gaze of the protagonist José Carlos, whose search for the "source" of the Chinese spirit organizes a "temporal journey" that articulates practically four centuries of Portugu...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
2013
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40042/2888 |
| Summary: | The article analyzes how Agustina Bessa-Luís, in *A Quinta Essência* (1999), constructs images of Chinese culture through the gaze of the protagonist José Carlos, whose search for the "source" of the Chinese spirit organizes a "temporal journey" that articulates practically four centuries of Portuguese presence in Macau. Arguing that otherness is produced by mechanisms of familiarization—mixing fantasy, delirium, and historical reality—the author interprets the novel as a device for reading cultural encounter, simultaneously proximate and distant. The study mobilizes a critical-literary approach centered on the articulation between plot and underlying History, examining "bridge-texts" and documentary references (letters, memoirs, diaries, travel accounts, dictionaries, decrees) that sustain a frequently stereotyped view of the Orient. As an interpretive axis, the inscription of *The Dream of the Red Chamber* (*Hong Lou Meng*) stands out, functioning as a structuring cultural archive: its images, themes, and narrative forms intersect with the empirical experience of the characters in Portugal, Macau, and China. It concludes that the novel reconfigures the relationship between identity and difference by converting History into a matter of imagination, exposing the conditions of production of cultural "others" and the limits of deciphering the foreign. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |