Vasco da Gama – navegando entre memória, história e literatura
Vasco da Gama – Navigating between History, Memory and Literature)

Summary/Abstract: This work aims to analyze the relationship that is established between the perpetually ressemantized figure of the great Portuguese national hero Vasco da Gama, the collective memory and the reconstitution or, on the contrary, the literary deconstruction of the same. An imposing historical actor who often reaches the dimensions of a myth, Vasco da Gama was not only the main personality of the Great Age of Discovery, but also a character in literary works that covered the temporal, stylistic and thematic axis of the last five centuries. Álvaro Velho, Luís de Camões, Fernando Pessoa or António Lobo Antunes, among others, offer us an image that sometimes legitimizes the past but, in most cases, reposition itself in relation to it, rethinking it and making visible the inconsistencies between history, memory and literature. Vasco da Gama's figure will therefore become a pretext for an extensive and profound reflection on the legitimation and instrumentalisation of collective memory, on its relevance within literary discourse, and on a whole socio- cultural and historical imaginary, confronted with the mechanisms of memory and forgetfulness. Is there, between history, memory and literature, fused in the controversial image of Vasco da Gama, a common discourse? And is it relevant? These are the questions that we will try to answer here.

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