A desconstrução da história de Portugal em As Naus

Abstract

In the period of Navigations, Portugal has amplified its Empire, spread its culture and conquered new adepts to its religion. It obtained many colonies, profitable for years. These events had been diffused by History and reinforced by national literature, fact that created a mythic and symbolic atmosphere. Luís de Camões and Os Lusíadas contributed significantly to the solidification and maintenance of the self-affirmative discourse of the lusitan being, which nowadays is still linked to the past. In this way, we believe that the lusiada nation has never looked its pés de barro over. The uncountable changes along the time have not been sufficient to wake the Portuguese people of the glorious dream, but in its own literature there are critic voices attempt and in consonance with post-modernity. Among them we found António Lobo Antunes, who, through his parody As Naus, makes a critical rereading of the Portugal past, directing a new look over the same. In As Naus, the Portuguese History is disconstructed as well as its representatives: the heroes and Lisbon, capital of the empire. In this novel, the places are decadent, ruined and having an unpleasant smell, as people are in decomposition or suffering mental pathologies; metaphor of the society in its own sickness. So, Luís de Camões, Pedro Álvares Cabral, Manuel de Sousa de Sepúlveda, Francisco Xavier, Diogo Cão, Garcia da Orta, Fernão Mendes Pinto, Vasco da Gama, King D. Manuel, among other historical characters, seam dissacred by carnivalization, manifested in the referred work by smile, irony, grotesque and madness; elements used by Lobo Antunes to strengthen and improve the attempt to change the lusitan mentality.