Sief abr2011 inglês

Human Ecology in
Portuguese Literature:
Images and concepts in
Ferreira de Castro’s novels

Ana Cristina Carvalho
FCSH – UNL, Lisbon, Portugal

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10 th International Congress of SIEF - Lisboa, Abril 2011 Ana Cristina Carvalho .

Presentation aims an overview of the presence
of Nature and Environment in the literary work
of Portuguese writer Ferreira de Castro*, by
interpreting on how six “Pórticos”* to his
novels picture Portuguese and Brazilian
landscapes (natural and humanized), and in
what extent they reflect Ecology / Human
Ecology concepts.

* Artist who showed a particular “Way of felling the world”
* Pórticos – Writer’s personal introductory texts
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• Literature – expression of human thinking
independent of science, contains in its different styles -
novels and tales, dramatic texts, chronicals … -
a potencial of difusion of ecological values

• Literary language and culture plays a role in building
human perception of Natural World

Makes sense to cross
SCIENCE Knowledge ART (Literature) knowledge

Cross-disciplinary Ecocriticism

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Ecocriticism:
Green studies, Enviromental literary criticism, Literary ecology …

• Analysis and criticism of literary text concerning its content
in Nature and ecological subjects

• “Literary ecology” created in 1972 by Joseph W. Meeker:
“the study of biological themes and relationships which appear
in literary works”

• “Ecocriticism” coined 1978 by American William Rueckert,
although in 1923, Norman Foerster’s Nature in American
Literature was pioneer book of this new academic field

Today, we try to identify concepts of human
and non-human nature in Ferreira de Castro
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Human Ecology:

• Systemic and interdisciplinary approach to understand
bio-socio-cultural dimension of human-being

• Born in the 20’s of xxth century * - Chicago School -
responding to the complexity of problems of Human
population in American megacities

• A scientific field relating ECOSPHERE to SOCIALSPHERE

• Intersection NATURE Sciences HUMAN/SOCIAL
Sciences

SHE (Society for Human Ecology):
Relation Arts (specialy Literature) - Ecology
is one of its several departments
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Portugal… A strongly humanized territory - its Natural
Patrimony strictly connected to human activity

This connection was captured and pictured by
high sensitivity of writer Ferreira de Castro
His novels:
• Example of how Literature shows no
immunity to Nature
• Reveal an influence of
• local land rhythm
• place spirit
• environmental practices
… linked to
• human work
• human well-being
• human pain

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Ferreira de Castro
(1898 - 1974)

Stands out among Portuguese literary
scene with work of great aesthetical and
ethical density and wide outreach

Between 1928 - 1974 writes ten novels
picturing several areas of Portugal and
Brasil, and wide Journey Literature

His roots were rural and poor Portugal on early XXth century Leaves
alone to Brazil at 12, and spends adolescence in Seringal Paraíso

Worldwide translated during XXth century. Masterpiece Jungle was
one of ten books most read in the world, acording to UNESCO, 1973
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Ferreira de Castro

In Portuguese newspaper O Século, 1964,
confesses an “irresistable fascination” for
“great and green landscapes” and “it was
in company of Nature that I wrote most of
my pages”

Human condition as a main literary character

His fiction is fed by
• solid humanistic ideals,
• social conscience *, and
• particular sensivity to vital dependence that links NATURE to PEOPLE
EARTH to MAN

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Supreme
Jungle
A Selva 1930
Instinct
O Instinto
Supremo 1968

Emigrantes
Brasil

1928
Portuga

Cold Land
Terra Fria 1934
Barroso Lands
l

Wool and Snow
A Lã e a Neve 1947
Serra da Estrela Natural
Park

Fragments
Os Fragmentos 1974
Vale do Guadiana
Natural Park

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Brasil
3 stories of men seeking for a better life abroad…

Emigrants
• Scenario: Brasilian coffee farm of Piracicaba (S. Paulo state)
 Geographical approach:
• Scale: Man - Homeland – Country – Europe – Oceans - World…
• Movement: from a Continent to another,
from North Hemisphere to South Hemisphere
Jungle • Scenario: Human-being confronting Nature in Brasilian
Amazonia – “Green magesty”: “Seringal” - rubber tree
forest – state of Acre
 Man exploring a natural resource :
• Poor South countries - workers submitting to forest vs.
• Rich North countries - societies using those resouces
Supreme
Instinct • Scenario: same Amazonia, with its “Madeira” river
• Defends Indian Parintintins – “popular heroes fighting without guns
or blood” – attacked by white people
 Conservation instinct leads men to fight without keeling
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Portugal
Cold Land

Story of mountain poor people seeking for better life in Spain

• Scenario: Northern Portugal, within National Park of Peneda-Gerês
• Natural Environment: Winter: snow, winds and woolves; Spring:
cultivated fields and flowery plants
• People living “between the mountain and the sky” – a landscape
where “civilization” has not yet arrived and produces sullen peasants

Ecology / Human Ecology concepts: • Habitat (Rural)
• Land use: Agriculture
• Adaptation and Resilience
• Resistence and Survival
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Portugal
Wool and Snow

Story of a people´s way from shepards and weavers to factory
workers, from handmade to mechanical mass production
• Scenario: Central Portugal - Serra da Estrela National Park
• Natural Environment: peaks and valleys; granite and streams; creeping
vegetation; snow and extreme cold…
• Human Ec.: People and their sheep flocks, in extremely poor houses

Ecology / Human Ecology concepts: • Mountain ecosystem
• Climate conditions
• Land use: Grazing, rye crops
• Competition
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Portugal
Fragments

Story of a copper mine, and 2000 miners demanding better
and healthier labour conditions
• Scenario: Southern Portugal, Vale do Guadiana National Park
• Natural Environment: Subsoil resource; Sunny and warm climate
• Human Environment: village of houses with no windows, no light

Ecology / Human Ecology concepts: • Over exploitation:
Man and Earth
• Pollution - Air
- Visual
- Health
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So… In these 6 literary “Pórticos”:

Classic Ecology : HUMAN Ecology :
• Species – Population • Homo sapiens as special living
• Comunity species
• Ecosystem • Urban habitat: little villages;
(jungle, forest, pastures…) rural comunities
• Earth / Environment providing: • Exploitation and dependence
• Natural Recources : Wood, wool.. • Human resources: inventivity, …
• Pressures • Diversity of human groups and
• Biodiversity settlements
• Cooperation / Competition • Human cooperation /
Inter and Intra-species Competition
• Adaptation and Resilience*
• Resistence** and Survival
* Resilience – Capacity to suffer outside pressure and get back to inicial state
** Resistence – capacity to suffer outside pressure and survive
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Some REFERENCES

ALVES, Ricardo A. .s/d. Ferreira de Castro. Catálogo do Museu. Sintra, ed. Câmara
Municipal de Sintra, 95 p.
BUELL, Lawrence. 2005. The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis
and Literary Imagination. Malden, USA, Oxford, UK, Victoria, Australia, Blackwell
publishing, 188 pp.
COUPE, Laurence. 2000. The Green studies Reader: From Romanticism to
Ecocriticism. New York, Routledge, 315 p.
FRANCO, António C.. 1988. “O Significado da Selva na obra de Ferreira de Castro”, in
Colóquio-Letras, Nº 104-195, Julho – Outubro, pp. 62-69.
GARRARD, Greg. 2004. Ecocriticism. The New critical idiom. London and New York:
Routledge, Australia, Monash University, 197 p.
GLOTFELTY, Cheryl e FROMM, Harold (eds).. 1996. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks
in Literary Ecology. The University of Georgia Press, Athens and London, 409 p.

 Thank you for your attention
10 th International Congress of SIEF - Lisboa, Abril 2011 Ana Cristina Carvalho . 15

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