Chapter 3 Utopia and History: Os Lusíadas (Camões) and Uma viagem à Índia (G. M. Tavares)
In: Eastern and Western Synergies and Imaginations
Author:
Helena Carvalhão Buescu
Helena Carvalhão Buescu
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Abstract
We envisage the ambiguous counter-epic by Gonçalo M. Tavares, A Voyage to India (2010), as a rewriting of the canonical epic by Camões. Both evolve around a voyage that makes East and West connect more directly. However, Tavares’ counter-epic responds in a particular way to the hopes and glimpses of the future included in The Lusiads, by making it a dialogue with different authors of the epic tradition (as Mahabarata, Homer, Joyce, and Camões), and therefore by questioning the utopian principle that The Lusiads implicates. The episode of Ilha do Amor will be at the core of our argument.