LEAVING THE LUNATIC ASYLUM: THE CRISIS OF THE CITY AND THE EMERGENCE OF BEING IN ENSAIO SOBRE A CEGUEIRA BY JOSÉ SARAMAGO

Authors

  • Rodolfo Pereira Passos Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho - UNESP/Araraquara.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2175-3180.v4i8p26-37

Keywords:

City, Portuguese Fiction, José Saramago, Post-modernism

Abstract

The novel Ensaio sobre a Cegueira (1995), by José Saramago, without explicit marks of time or space, the reader come across a baffling and unpredictable epidemic of “white blindness” in an anonymous city. However, there´s no denying that some contemporary marks show a world similar to the reader´s world: such as cars, impatient drivers, traffic lights, luxurious buildings and constructions. It´s necessary to comprehend the city and all his senses (before and after the epidemic) and underline the new and extraordinary light will produce fear and break, that is, a barrier to urban alienation - in other words, a criticism of the notion of progress. We´ll try to understand how the Portuguese writer has utilized these data through an ontological and postmodern dominant to analyze the human being and his connection with a world marked by a state of blindness, and then, through the fiction, to establish his questionings based on ethic and existence.

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Author Biography

  • Rodolfo Pereira Passos, Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho - UNESP/Araraquara.
    Mestrando.

Published

2012-12-05

How to Cite

Passos, R. P. (2012). LEAVING THE LUNATIC ASYLUM: THE CRISIS OF THE CITY AND THE EMERGENCE OF BEING IN ENSAIO SOBRE A CEGUEIRA BY JOSÉ SARAMAGO. Revista Desassossego, 4(8), 26-37. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2175-3180.v4i8p26-37