In the unusual, disbelief: comparative analysis of "Os Idólatras", by Maria Judite de Carvalho, and "Objeto Quase", by José Saramago

• Autor(a) principal: Sabino, Raquel Lopes
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.58155/revistadeletras.v1i5.331

The literary work by José Saramago differs greatly from that of Maria Judite de Carvalho, an author much less (re)known and studied than the only Nobel Prize winner in literature of portuguese language. Even so, both are voices from the same country, from the same time and, as we intend to evidence, both were endorsed with a strong and close sensibility. Especially in what concerns social issues, Maria Judite de Carvalho and José Saramago expressed in words their critical and disapproving perspectives of the world in which they lived, perspectives that we know can be found throughout the literary production of both writers, regardless of the narrative genre. We believe it is possible to determine common vectors in Maria Judite de Carvalho's and José Saramago's approaches to the human being and contemporary societies. To this end, we will analyse Os Idólatras, by Maria Judite de Carvalho, and Objeto Quase, by José Saramago, both volumes of short stories that depart from the norm of the body of work of both by the unusual content of the narratives, which can be classified, in some cases, as dystopian or simply futuristic, and, in others, as fantastic. Written about ten years apart, during the dictatorship or in the aftermath of that period, the short stories in Os Idólatras and Objeto Quase reflect their authors' vision of the society of that time and, above all, of its future, in a strongly critical representation, perhaps made easier by their elements of unreality. What they have in common is that they are works that have been less studied in comparison to other Judithian and Saramago publications, perhaps because of their unusual nature, which is little related to these authors, who are associated with a literature that tends to be raw and distant from these narrative genres. We will then analyse how Maria Judite de Carvalho and José Saramago find each other in their lucidity about the condition of the human being and, above all, in their disbelief towards this condition.