paris
Unclear how much of this can be trusted. There's few (if any) citations; some nonsensical assertions presented as fact (such as the easily-disprovel assertion that the Diocese of Braga was created in 37 AD) do not exactly lend credence to the rest of the text, nor do a few rather faulty translations. There are many, many typos.
Furthermore, only three of the essays in this text are actually *about* Death in Portugal; I am excluding the fourth because it's an only vaguely related tangent on the presence of Portuguese studies at Oxford, including the holdings of Oxford's Bodley Library.
The only essay worth much of anything is that of the editors João de Pina-Cabral and Rui Feijó, titled "Conflicting Attitudes to Death in Modern Portugal: The Question of Cemeteries," if only for its rather expansive discussion on the intersection of law and common practice.
The one thing about that book that stuck with me the most is how rare it is to find such a thoroughly researched and cited text. The text itself is fantastic, the organization thorough. I found it particularly informative to have events discussed more than once in differing lenses than to attempt to cover the event once from all lenses. I learned much.
Many who write about Brazil in English fall into a strange category of not presenting an English text but a Portuguese text that has been word for word translated into English; this creates problems for the bilingual who cannot know if the word choice is conscious or relies on a faulty understanding of the translated language.
This is not that. While there is use of Portuguese in the text, it is always given a decent, functional translation.
During the scope of my research, this has been my hands-down favorite text. The stories of individuals shape the larger social forces, leaving neither too removed a summary nor too granular a scope.
Note: I only read the essay by Marcia Honoria de Godoy, called "O Desejado e o Encoberto: Potências de Movimento de um Mito Andarilho."
Where exactly is the scholarship? Where are the citations, where is the evidence?
Godoy's essay on Sebastian is nearly entirely citationless, and what citations he does offer do nothing to support his actual claims, merely offering reference to the documents which he misinterprets. He seems to have a strangely naïve view of history. His long passages on the (historically nonexistent) relationship between Camões and Dom Sebastião are frankly bizarre, as are his strange adulations towards Sebastian himself. It is surreal to find outright embrasure of the idea that Sebastian's body disappeared, or that there was any actual factual reasoning for the sebastianismo movement, when we have Dom Sebastião's body and, in fact, have had Dom Sebastião's body since he fell outside of Alcácer-Quibir: he's currently interred in Lisbon, and has been for centuries, and any argument otherwise is poor scholarship that buys into the self-same movement an academic like Godoy should know better than perpetuate.
Worse still, is also excedingly strange to find what appear to be thinly veiled monarchist opinions in a book published by EdUSP in 2015.
Contains spoilers
Not my usual taste, but encouraged to read it on a recommendation. Extremely tense, tight, and compelling; I quite honestly could not put it down. My only caveat is that the style of the writing itself is bleak and sparse. I must admit it suits the message and plot and characters well.
A particular favorite is the usage of appearance: Leamas’ actions and gestures are written in how they appear, without giving the obvious heavy-handed explanation that it is all for show. The reader wonders (well, I wondered) who was playing who.
I really liked Fiedler, unfortunately. The grim calculus of the final survivors was rather depressing, especially with the oft-recalled quote Fiedler made about tragedy.
The quality of Mufwene's scholarship cannot be argued.
Several of the essays within, however, contained information that was refuted by other essayists, or would be better informed with more extensive research, or even exposure to Brazilian scholarship. My personal pet peeve was the lack of consistent understanding amongst the essayists on how many forms of Nheengatú existed between the colonial era and today: the fact that they could not agree on basic facts such as that (let alone the inability of understand the nuance of Brazilian racial "categorizations") despite being collected in a single volume under one editorship was disappointing and frustrating. I will note that Denny Moore's essay was particularly good.
I did not read the sections concerning non-Brazilian matters, as they were outside of the scope of my research.
Contains spoilers
Extremely beautiful, and haunting. Each section was worthy to stand on its own, but the picture painted through time by each led to a bigger picture that somehow made each piece resonate within its greater context. The last and first sections were my favorites, and I find myself thinking of them often, even now, especially Michael, now several months later. I am haunted by the conclusion of Michael's section, and still today, I think of him: I worry for him. I want to believe he escaped the confines of the restrictions of his beginnings with earnestness.
I really enjoyed the interstitial sections, and how as the story told in the text moved from the more distant past to the present (and how historically the form of the written English language and even the concept of prose became more rigidly defined) the text itself reflected that change. The medium is the message. Delightful!
The cycling characters were also really enjoyable in a way that felt both immediately comfortable and yet freshly novel. Meeting, parting, meeting again, but not. A delight to read, surely: to find them and see them and say, “Is that you again, my friend?”
Really a lovely book.