The Hypercontemporary Novel in Portugal: Fictional Aesthetics and Memory after Postmodernism

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The first volume of critical essays on the contemporary Portuguese novel in English, this book theorizes the concept of the hypercontemporary as a way of reading the novel after its postmodern period. This inquiry into the notion of the hypercontemporary in its literary and cultural articulations analyzes a varied group of works representative of the most vibrant novels published in Portugal since 2000. The editors introductory chapter theorizes the concept of the hypercontemporary as one way of looking at the novel after its postmodern period especially in its relation to questions of violence, memory and performativity. These essays show how the Portuguese novel has evolved in the past 25 years, and how, in their diversity, most of these novels exhibit several common traits, including new topics and writing strategies sometimes developing further entropic lines characteristic of many Postmodern narratives and themes of violence, rapid transformation, and the many threats to a contemporary world that seems mass-produced due to greater technological advances. Readings also discuss the use of innovative graphic forms available from current print technologies and global networks. The Hypercontemporary Novel in Portugal provides a necessary understanding of the current literary landscape of Portugal and, in the process, the aesthetics of hyperrealism or post-postmodernism.

Author Bio

Ana Paula Arnaut is Professor of Portuguese Contemporary Literature at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. She is a member of the Centre of Portuguese Literature, and her main fields of research are postmodernism and hypercontemporary in Portuguese Literature, colonial and postcolonial studies, and womens studies. She has published several books and articles both in national and international journals. Paulo de Medeiros is Professor of Modern & Contemporary World Literatures in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Previously he held the Chair of Portuguese Studies at Utrecht, the Netherlands, and was President of the American Portuguese Studies Association. He is co-editor of a volume of essays on Luso-African film (2021) and author of two books on Fernando Pessoa, besides work on comparative literature.