Archives

  • Right to Literature
    No. 14 (2025)

    «Who does literature belong to?» This provocative question — which opens the presentation text of the Thematic Dossier «The Right to Literature» — resonates throughout this issue of e-Letras com Vida, paving the way for reflections that cross the fields of creation, criticism, and education. Inspired by Raymond Williams and his defense of culture as a common good, we invite readers to an engaged reading committed to the democratization of knowledge and the overcoming of old barriers that separate "high culture" from marginal or marginalized voices.

     

  • Graça Morais and the art of thinking the world
    No. 13 (2024)

    Graça Morais and the Art of Thinking the World was the title of an international conference dedicated to the work of the painter Graça Morais (b. 1948). Held in Paris in December 2021, this event brought together a range of professionals from the academic, museological, and cinematic fields, who, alongside the artist, presented their reflections on the intersections of (her) painting with other areas of knowledge, such as Art History and Theory, Literature, Philosophy, and Anthropology. This thematic dossier gathers eight articles that reflect the diversity of methodological and interpretative approaches to Graça Morais' pictorial universe.

  • Martin Luther, a builder of modernity
    No. 12 (2024)

    The thematic dossier presented here brings together texts that result from conferences presented at the International Congress 'A Builder of Modernity: Luther – Theses – 500 years,' organized in 2017 to mark the 500th anniversary of what can be considered the symbolic starting date of the 16th-century reform movement. Comprising eight articles by recognized national and international researchers, this thematic dossier aims to contribute to a thorough reflection on different dimensions of the Reformation movement, its consequences, and its current influence on the world, and to (re)visit Luther's thought as one of the builders of modernity. Besides its religious capital, in the form of knowledge and human experience, we cannot overlook the philosophical, literary, and aesthetic values that help us understand our contemporaneity.

  • Mário Cesariny and Mário-Henrique Leiria: Two Centenaries of Surrealism in Portugal
    No. 11 (2023)

    The thematic dossier of this year-end edition pays homage to two geniuses of Surrealism, Mário-Henrique Leiria (1923-1980) and Mário Cesariny (1923-2006), who both reached the milestone of 100 years in 2023. As multifaceted artists, they dedicated themselves passionately to artistic and literary expression in the pursuit of freedom.

  • Global Pombal: Accomplishments and Perceptions
    No. 10 (2023)

    The «Global Pombal: Achievements and Perceptions» thematic dossier is one of the outcomes from the Pombalia-Pombal Global project, coordinated by José Eduardo Franco, Pedro Calafate and Viriato Soromenho-Marques, and aggregates some contributions by specialists on the valedictory of King José I and the 18th century, texts that correspond to written versions, reformulated and, in some cases, added, of some oral communications presented in events held in the scope of the abovementioned project.

  • Representations of Authoritarianism in Portuguese and Brazilian Literature
    No. 9 (2022)

    Literature, like other art forms, has always served an instrument for resistance, which through various discursive strategies responds to manifestations of oppression, despotism and dogmatism of various kinds. Above all, 20th century literary production — a century that witnessed a proliferation of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes, armed conflicts, wars and genocides, despite humanity's extraordinary progress in multiple areas — was marked by a strong sense of social, cultural or political engagement, which also extends to literary creation in the 21st century. Also in the Portuguese-speaking countries, one of the recurrent themes in modern and contemporary literary production has been the criticism towards the arbitrariness by authoritarian governments, as is the case of the Salazar regime — which stifled Portuguese society for over forty years and prolonged colonial exploitation in Africa — and by the dictatorial regimes established in the second half of the last century in Brazil and other Latin American countries. The aim of this dossier is to present some expressions of critical thinking on the literary production that deals with this subject. Therefore, eight studies devoted to the analysis of works by Portuguese and Brazilian authors who, at different times and through different forms of expression, reacted against authoritarian tendencies in Lusophone societies are gathered here.

  • Art(facts) and Historical Expedients
    No. 8 (2022)

    The texts collected here bring together a fundamental requirement, which consists in stimulating the dialogue between literature, history and other arts. Given their interdisciplinary character, the reader will notice that the articles discuss artistic codes; discuss concepts; rescue rhetorical and poetic expedients; problematize literary and iconographic genres, etc., without neglecting the political, theological, stylistic and institutional subtleties underlying the critical reception of what was produced in other times and places.

  • Literature, Arts and Hypertext on the Web
    No. 7 (2021)

    The seventh number of e-Letras Com Vida consolidates its hermeneutic opening to the perspectives of the emerging epistemological field of Global Studies, placing the approach of published studies in the context of global dynamics that makes more transparent the complex network of influences that mark the objects of research and analysis. The contents of this issue are greatly better understood if they are framed in the dynamics, challenges and implications of trends, understood in a broader horizon of the construction of knowledge about the world and the world that comes to know more and more, as a porous and inter-influential reality, which shapes the construction of history, literature, social phenomena, currents of knowledge and even modes of cultural creation and transmission.

  • Rethinking the History of Assistance and Health in Portugal (12th- 20th centuries)
    No. 6 (2021)

    The sixth issue of e-Letras com Vida brings as its thematic dossier the fascinating study (especially in times of pandemic) on health and assistance in Portugal, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, under the coordination of historians Joana Balsa de Pinho and Paulo Drumond Braga. With its multi-thematic articles, the usual international interview and critical readings, this is a diversified issue that combines the past and the present with some perspective, taking into account the redefinition of the subtitle of this journal: Revista de Estudos Globais – Humanidades, Ciências e Artes. With this redefinition, it is intended to broaden the scope of the journal, making it more interdisciplinary, and, from the close dialogue with the different areas of knowledge, providing it with new approaches framed in the emerging filed of Global Studies - thus, giving substance to the partnership with the Chair of Global Studies and with the Doctorate in Global Studies, from Universidade Aberta.

  • História, Literatura e Cozinha
    No. 5 (2020)

    The fifth issue of e-Letras com Vida brings the thematic dossier on «History, Literature and Cuisine» coordinated by Isabel Drumond Braga. Readers will virtually sit at the table with Portuguese and Brazilian authors in order to take a journey through history and stories. The dining-readers will be able to taste — i.e. to read — the cuisine that was the theme of socialization in the 16th century in the play script by António Ribeiro Chiado (Auto das regateiras) and in the text by the humanist André de Resende (De Antiquitatibus Lusitaniae), which will be « served» by Guida Cândido and Inês de Ornellas e Castro, respectively. In the hands of Isabel Drumond Braga, maître of this dossier, they will travel to the 19th century table of Portuguese and Brazilian cod and sardine lovers, accompanied by Camilo Castelo Branco (O santo da montanha) fixed by Maria Antonietta Rossi. With no ceremony, they will sit at the table of Gervásio Lobato (Lisboa em camisa) at the invitation of Paulo Drumond Braga. In the 20th century, they will be able to participate in the modernist O banquete by Mário de Andrade, offered by Claude Papavero, and, for dessert, there will be fruit from the poetic orchard by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, picked by Maria Serena Felici.

  • Portuguese of paper, an international research project
    No. 4 (2020)

    The fourth issue of e-Letras com Vida marks the second year of the magazine. In this moment of global balance in which the economy, the community, and health are at risk, to ask where we are going (or where are we going to stop?) is not necessarily a philosophical matter. Even more, fiction and reality sometimes seem to be confused — and to confuse us, characters in danger in a contaminated world. A great adventure, this one that we live.

  • Ten Faces of Sena: Reading clues of the work of Jorge de Sena, marking the centenary of his birth
    No. 3 (2019)

    This issue brings a dossier that could not fail to appear this year, in which we celebrate the centenary of Jorge de Sena worldwide. We say worldwide, due to his irrevocable artistic presence in the field of literary studies and also for the fact that this well-known poet, critic, writer, teacher, father of nine children and passionate husband made a career, or even careers, in Portugal, Brazil, and in the United States.

  • A Receção das Literaturas de Língua Portuguesa nos Países da Europa Central e de Leste
    No. 2 (2019)

    Here we are, with this second issue of e-Letras com Vida — Journal of Humanities and Arts. We display a set of essays that seek to convey, with a great diversity of perspectives, themes collected, particularly, in the dialogue of cultures and aesthetics, in a time of globalization and fluidity of knowledge, practices and identities.

  • Pensamento do Fora & Poéticas de Resistência
    No. 1 (2018)

    This is the first issue of e-Letras com Vida — Journal of Humanities and Arts, with an essentially essayistic nature. The journal proposes to present in this and in the following issues a diversity of points of view, including research texts and critical readings that deal with the issue of Portuguese-speaking countries in the global context. e-Letras com Vida wants to join the plan of editions that bring together thinkers from all over the world in order to answer to the current need to gather ideas between here and there, which are often found in a present here, which, globalized, needs to challenge borders and overcome walls, or jump fences guarded by militias.