Title: A canon of empty fathers : paternity in Portuguese narrative /
Authors: Rothwell, Phillip, 1972-
Publisher: Bucknell University Press,
Year: 2007
Subjects: Portuguese fiction History and criticism.; Portuguese fiction History and criticism.; Fatherhood in literature.; Fathers in literature
Abstract: "A Canon of Empty Fathers: Paternity in Portuguese Narrative is the first book-length study that analyzes the repeated and peculiar deployment of the father figure in Portuguese narratives from the nineteenth century to the present day. In it, Phillip Rothwell argues for a specifically Portuguese tendency toward what he terms "empty paternity" - a corruption of the Lacanian paternal function that has surfaced continuously in Portuguese culture from the fifteenth century onward." "Drawing on theories of materialist Lacanians, including Slavoj Zizek and Alenka Zupancic, Rothwell weaves together history, psychoanalysis, and literature in a wide-ranging interrogation of Portugal's imperial and postimperial consciousness."--book jacket.
Contents: Introduction : the orphan and the missing messiah -- 1. The lusotropical father : excess and absence in Francisco Gomes de Amorim -- 2. Ethics, the thing, and the father : Almeida Garrett's contribution to empty paternity -- 3. From market to closet : Eca de Queiros's missing fathers -- 4. Sidonio to Salazar : perfecting the image of the empty father -- 5. From patriarchs to missing fathers : Jose Regio renegotiates the paternal -- 6. Between truth and tyranny : taking language away in the name of the empty father in Jose Cardoso Pires -- 7. Antonio Lobo Antunes : fathers "between two deaths" -- 8. Farewell to the father : metaphors, triangles, and the missing link in Helder Macedo -- Conclusion : empty fathers -- the Portuguese "ou Pire"