Portuguese Literature and the Environment explores the relationship between Portuguese literature and the environment from Medieval times to the present. From the centrality of nature in Medieval poetry, through the bucolic verse of the Renaissance, all the way to the Romantic and post-Romantic nostalgia for a pristine natural or rural landscape under threat in the wake of industrialization, Portuguese literature has frequently reflected on the connection between humans and the natural world. More recently, the postcolonial turn in contemporary literature has highlighted the contrast between the environment of the former colonies and that of Portugal.

Contributors to the collection examine how Portuguese writers engage with the environment and have incorporated nature in their texts not only to prompt social, political or philosophical reflections on human society, but also as a way to learn from non-humans.

The book is organized into three sections. The first explores the relationship between Portuguese philosophy, historiography, culture, and environmental issues. The second section discusses the link between literary texts and the environment from the Renaissance to 1900. The final section analyzes the connection between literary movements or specific authors and environmental change from 1900 to today. Scholars of literature, Latin American studies, literature, and environmental studies will find this volume especially useful.

Victor K. Mendes is associate professor of Portuguese, director of the PhD program in Luso-Afro-Brazilian studies and theory, and director of the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture/Tagus Press at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Patrícia Vieira is associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, comparative literature, and film and media studies at Georgetown University and associate research professor at the Center for Social Studies (CES) at the University of Coimbra.

Introduction

Chapter 1. A Portuguese Approach to the Environmental Crisis

Chapter 2. Environment, Nature and Landscape: Conceptual Affinities and Distinctions in the Portuguese Context

Chapter 3. Inter-, Multi- and Trans-Disciplinarity: New Horizons for Portuguese Environmental History

Chapter 4. Elemental Portugal

Chapter 5. Songs of Stance

Chapter 6. Portuguese Environmental Perceptions of Brazil in the Sixteenth Century

Chapter 7. Natures Literary Lessons: Júlio Dinis on Literature and the Environment

Chapter 8. On Borrowed Womens Time: Ecological Female Bodies and the Re-Engendering of Nature in Eça de Queiróss A Cidade e as Serras

Chapter 9. Hunters of Empire: João Teixeira de Vasconceloss Colonial Memoirs of African Hunting

Chapter 10. Environmentalizing Fernando Pessoa's Modernism

Chapter 11. The Posthuman Poetry of Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen

Chapter 12. The Environment and José Saramagos Literary Program in Journey to Portugal.

In Pursuit of Portugals History and Culture