CONTOS DA ÁGUA E DO VENTO : RECONTOS
This article reads Tales of Water and Wind: Retellings (Fernanda Dias) as an intervention of reimagining Tang chuanqi in Portuguese fiction from Macao. The thesis argues that Dias's retellings are not translations but authorial recreations that, while maintaining the mythical and moral aura of the T...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
October 2002
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40004/2698 |
| Summary: | This article reads Tales of Water and Wind: Retellings (Fernanda Dias) as an intervention of reimagining Tang chuanqi in Portuguese fiction from Macao. The thesis argues that Dias's retellings are not translations but authorial recreations that, while maintaining the mythical and moral aura of the Tang texts, insist on a vision of woman associated with water: gentle, adaptable, and, at the same time, endowed with a constitutive force that infiltrates and transforms structures of power. Stella Lee's presentation contextualizes the pieces within the medieval Chinese literary tradition and proposes that Dias transforms historical motifs and narratives of chivalry, love, and virtue into contemporary fiction, with no perceptible marks of Tang chuanqi, but with the practice of creative recreation.
The analysis focuses on the tales "The Secret of Sie Siao-Ngo" and "The Enigma of the White Monkey," examining how the female protagonists prevail through flexibility and subtlety, in line with the Tao Te Ching aphorism: "the weak conquers the strong." While Sie Siao-Ngo enacts moral asceticism and conjures the destruction of the oppressors, "The Enigma of the White Monkey" reveals an almost deified force, where the wind functions as a narrative driver and symbol of destiny. The result is a reading that confirms Dias's effectiveness in converting tradition into autonomous fiction, a haven for a poetics of female resistance and fantasy within the cultural space of Macao. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |