Banca de DEFESA: ROSANA CARVALHO DA SILVA GHIGNATTI

EÇA DE QUEIROS AND THE PERCEPTION OF THE LANDSCAPE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Eça de Queirós; Travel narratives; A relíquia; Landscape; Portuguese Literature

This thesis aims to study the Travel Narratives (Egypt, Palestine and Upper Syria) and the novel A relíquia, by the Portuguese writer José Maria Eça de Queirós (1845-1900), from the perspective of Cultural Humanist Geography. Through the bibliographic review and the comparative method, the work interacts with several disciplines such as Literature, Geography and History, demonstrating that interdisciplinarity is one of the many pillars of Queirós' writing. Our question turns to the writer's view of the Middle East and how that travel experience brought impacts to his future works, both for journalistic articles ("Os ingleses no Egito" and " De Port-Said a Suez: carta sobre a inauguração do Canal de Suez”), as well as fiction, such as the short stories (“Suave Milagre” and “A morte de Jesus”) and the novel A relíquia. It also investigates how the travel narrative genre encompasses specific interests according to the historical context and how Eça de Queirós interpreted the foreigner based on his orientalist readings and his own experience in loco.