Isabel Pinto

ABSTRACT
This article addresses eighteenth-century tragedy from the point of
view of its heroines. The author considers the neoclassical reworking
of tragic events, with its empowering of ancient, and also modern,
women, which proliferated in the Iberian Peninsula. Within this
framework, Virginia and Megara, two tragedies by male authors,
provide powerful depictions of female civic engagement, drawing
both on a radical stance of deciding upon life and death, and on the
portrayal of an untamed body that is emancipated from private male
desire to embrace nationhood. In terms of the history of sexuality,
these tragic heroines help to unravel the complex interrelationships
between death, eroticism and citizenship.

In the domain of electronic edition, drama's specificity has been considered in terms of metadata improvements and possibilities. At the same time, an increasing closeness between art history research and performance art has demonstrated its methodologi-cal value to assess the complex nature of the archive. My post-doctoral research follows the lead and goes as far as proposing that performance art can be an adequate methodology when preparing the electronic edition of eighteenth-century drama. Furthermore, " performing the archive " can help to fill the gap between the eventful nature of drama manuscripts and the audience of today, suggesting new ways of approaching the specific materiality of the plays.

A significant but overlooked body of dramatic production, in between heroic drama and history play, takes up on historical reconstruction as a strategy to reinforce national identity.1 Along with this ideological constraint, territorial dispute and conflict are posited as necessary means for the making of history: the hero, consistently depicted as a leader and a father-like figure, is faced with the hardships of war, the ultimate challenge, exemplifying the insurmountable power of collective
endeavor.The plays here addressed, The History of Sir Francis Drake (1659), Alfred (1740)—both masques—and the Portuguese The Most Loyal Vassal in the Siege of Guimarães (1796), assert theater’s ability to engage in the shaping of a national collective endeavor (Mäkinen, Wilmer,
and Worthen 14) and, at the same time, to fuel the “constant re-imagining of what the nation is” (Holdsworth 3) by actively unsettling the boundaries between nations, historical periods, and cultures.
In these plays, the reconstruction of the past is an instrument for heroic enactment. As narratives, they are easy to reconcile with one another, with historical figures and events being rebuilt from cultural memories. Nothing is random. To capture the nation, drama must be able to articulate different layers of meaning bridging the gap between the past and the future: the reinvention of the past must be wrapped in some historical accuracy; the hero is chosen from a collective repository
of cultural references and is then enriched with feelings and concrete actions. The hero comes to acquire a humanized dimension through dramatic enactment, and further accounts for a just balance
between the ideal by which he is inspired and the real that foregrounds his course of action. The goal is to disseminate an unpolluted version of the past, sharpened by the ever-present collective focus of the hero. Historical paradoxes are evaded, in order to legitimize a one-sided interpretation of the past of the nation.

This essay explores the educational contribution of the Comtesse de Genlis’ Théâtre à l'usage des jeunes personnes [Theatre of Education] (1792/1779–1780), a four-volume collection of closet drama, in light of the social, political and cultural shifts occurring in France in the period prior to the French Revolution. In particular, in two plays from Theatre of Education, La Marchande de Modes [The Milliner] and Le Libraire [The Bookseller], Genlis depicts the bourgeoisie’s proper behaviour toward the aristocracy and its natural place in the world. Thus, both plays exemplify the educational and the political role of Genlis, who attempts to tame the bourgeoisie through the twofold argument of proper education and effective parenthood, so as to keep alive the social order of the ancien régime.

Em 1748, é publicada em Lisboa a obra Arte Poética ou Regras da Verdadeira Poesia1, de Francisco José Freire, ou Cândido Lusitano, nome por que mais tarde responde no seio da Arcádia Lusitana, academia que ajuda a fun-dar. Volvidos nove anos, em 1757, em Amesterdão, sai do prelo Entretiens sur le Fils Naturel e no ano seguinte De la Poésie Dramatique (1758)2, de Denis Diderot, sobre-tudo um pensador, dado o eclectismo das suas aptidões e interesses. Estas duas obras, a par com Paradoxe sur le Comédien (1830), obra póstuma de que não nos ocupa-remos aqui, alicerçam a perspectiva do autor francês sobre a arte teatral no seu todo. O discurso aí adoptado introduz uma ruptura com a valência meramente educa-cional da cena, que se entendia dever ser moralizante.

Entrevista ao padre José Tolentino Mendonça, vice-reitor da Universidade Católica, poeta e dramaturgo, com vasta obra publicada, para quem o teatro é “uma experiência radical de diálogo, de exposição ao outro”. Foi realizada a 28 de Outubro de 2014, nas instalações da Universidade Católica Portuguesa, sito na Palma de Cima, num final de tarde.

As the “gracioso” presented himself/herself as a dismissive servant, always trying to survive his/her hunger, and also the love entanglements of the master, his/her subversive role in eighteenth-century mainstream public theatre has been acknowledged (e.g. Pereira, 1985; Santos, 1993; Dacanal, 2011). Based on the idea that a “necessity of history” (Miura, 2010, p. 77) sometimes determines the replacement of universalism by the “rhetoric of identity”, we have found similarities between the “gracioso”, and what he/she stands for, and the punk rock ideology, mainly in what concerns the refusal of hierarchy, and class, and an unruly attitude towards authority in general. Therefore, we will prove that although distant in time the “gracioso”, following an ethics of say-it-yourself, and a band like Crass, with its do-it-yourself, have something in common, despite the fact that eighteenth century opera, unlike punk rock, had no drum.

António José da Silva foi no século XVIII matéria apetecível de leitura, mediante testemunhos coevos que cabalmente no-lo demonstram, como o início da “Advertência do Colector” em Teatro Cómico Português (1744), isto para além do assinalável sucesso das suas composições dramáticas, atestado inclusive em pareceres censórios do final do século (Pinto, 2013: 685-686).
Já no século XX, O Judeu (1966), de Bernardo Santareno, e o filme de Jom Tob Azulay (1995), com o mesmo título, resgatam a memória biográfica do autor, que é, ao presente, sobejamente conhecida de um número significativo de membros da comunidade lusófona. Sabe-se, então, que nasceu no Rio de Janeiro em 1705, tendo sucumbido às mãos da Inquisição em 1739. O essencial do seu legado teatral é constituído por oito óperas, cujos títulos ressoam mais do que familiares.
Assim, o que permanecia por identificar e analisar era a recepção que a leitura dos seus textos desencadearia em pleno século XXI, por leitores de idade e formação variáveis. À Boca do Texto (2013) sintetiza, então, em ritmo de documentário, o veredicto de três leitores do nosso tempo acerca de três óperas de António José da Silva, a saber: Os Encantos de Medeia (1735), Anfitrião ou Júpiter e Alcmena (1736) e O Precipício de Faetonte (1738). Os testemunhos recolhidos esmiuçam a condição da personagem teatral, o impacto da contextualização espácio-temporal da intriga, o papel das indicações cénicas no resgate de referentes fundamentais, a função de uma mise-en-scène imaginária e o desafio da interpretação, entre outros tópicos relevantes.
Este registo vídeo comporta, adicionalmente, a leitura em voz alta de excertos das referidas obras pelos leitores participantes. Desta maneira, é a voz de António José da Silva que chega, por interpostas entoações, ao nosso convívio, espelhando o acerto de um estilo e registo que logra romper fronteiras históricas.

Resumo

As personagens estrangeiras são recorrentes na literatura portuguesa do século XVIII, nomeada-mente na dramática, atendendo a um rico repertório teatral que reflecte diversas vertentes sociais da época. É neste âmbito que a personagem do brasileiro assenta menos na nacionalidade e mais na vivência de uma realidade estranha à metrópole, com vista à obtenção de vantagens económicas que fizessem a diferença no regresso à pátria. O presente artigo tem por intuito a análise de alguns traços característicos atribuídos à figura do brasileiro, sobretudo, enquanto “torna-viagem”, na me-trópole portuguesa, no século XVIII, através do exercício de leitura de três textos de teatro, que nos dão a (re)conhecer a visão estereotipada de que eram alvo. A deslegitimação cultural lograda condicionava, por um lado, a inevitável acção de influências brasileiras na metrópole, mas, por ou-tro, criava condições para a discussão em torno de um novo protagonista na paisagem social de se-tecentos.

Palavras chave: Teatro português — Brasileiros — Representações culturais— Deslegitimação — Século XVIII.

A recent major focus on happiness and well-being within the educational realm encompasses a wide range of educational settings and practices. Some of the plays in Comédies et Proverbes (1865), by Sophie Rostopchine, Comtesse de Ségur, connect to this topic by introducing children forced to handle social complexity to find their place in the world. Thus, we propose a close reading of the plays Les Caprices de Gisèle and Le Diner de Mademoiselle Justine in light of the psychological and cultural complexity of the concept of happiness, with a twenty-first-century young audience in mind.

First, it must be acknowledged that Digital Humanities and the Study of Intermediality in Comparative Cultural Studies is a rather comprehensive volume containing numerous and relevant contributions on the still emergent field of intermedial studies, considering its 375 pages, 28 articles, plus an introduction. Additionally, the book offers a "Bibliography for Work in Intermediality and Digital Humanities," which is fully complete, and useful, and an "Index" (371-375). The articles assembled, as noted in the introduction, were previously published in the online quarterly CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb.

I am currently engaged in analysing how eighteenth-century European censorship (1700-1832) not only relied on educational, moral and religious grounds, but also pursued the edification of a unique cultural identity. By reading the censors’ texts, one can observe that as much as literature, theatre, and performance in general, were a matter of faith, dignity, composure and decorum (Goldstein, 2010), they were also considered vital to the definition of a national literature and culture. In combining arguments of personal morality with the mission of building a national canon for culture, censors tried to disseminate the idea that censorship, despite accusations on the contrary, was heading for social and cultural transformation and improvement. Nevertheless, the censors’ personal styles pervade the same cultural unification being promoted, since, although pursuing a common array of ideological aims, each censor had in mind a particular representation of national identity as his own “imagined community” (Hall, 1996). Therefore, I will foreground the contrasts between two different, and to a certain extent opposing, dimensions of censorship. On the one hand the official discourse of moral development and faith maintenance, and on the other hand, the subversive effect of the censors’ individual styles.