In defense of a total History: the Literary and the Historical in José Saramago

o poético e o histórico em José Saramago

Abstract

José Saramago is an eminently historical author. His works are woven and (re)signified from this essential element that, through his creative lens, is able of poetically unfolding in various allegorical and representative forms of the concrete world, past and present. Faced with this inevitable dialogue between the literary and the historical in his work, much of the criticism has been dedicated, in multiple analytical perspectives, to the understanding of the author’s facet as a reader of historians (VECCHIO, 2017; CERDEIRA, 2018; SILVA, 2022a), evidencing, in particular, its approach to the Marxist paradigms and the French school of the Annales. The link between the two epistemological currents is centered on the conception of total History, that is, one that aims to understand, in the same narrative plan, all historical subjects, rich and poor, clergy and lay people, among others. In view of this, the present article aims to elucidate how José Saramago, a declared Marxist, is in line with this theoretical perspective of total History and, at the same time, to elucidate how this conception is materialized in his literature.