A poetcs of the imaginary in José Saramago s fiction

Abstract

This project aims, at first, to analyze "Embargo", "Coisas" and "Centauro", short stories collected in Objecto Quase (1978), a work that critics include in José Saramago's formative period and whose approach is founded in elements of the Marvelous, in categories of the Fantastic, as well as those of Magical Realism, all of which make up the imaginary associated to the insolite in Saramago's fiction. Since those short stories prefigure later novels of the Portuguese author, a second aim of this research proposal is to follow up on some questions found in Memorial do Convento (1982) - a novel where the possibilities of readings in the insolite tradition - that confirm the importance of the Marvelous for creating the imaginary in José Saramago's storytelling, as well as to develop some reflections concerning Ensaio sobre a cegueira (1995), in order to demonstrate how the absurd atmosphere that constitutes the contemporary Fantastic is built in that novel, besides studying, in the composition of O homem duplicado (2002), the presence of elements of the imaginary represented by the categories of the traditional Fantastic under a new point of view, evidencing, therefore, the "circularity" of procedures that constitute what we call modes of the insolite, representing here the imaginary in the fictional work of José Saramago, without forgetting the reader, an indispensable piece of the fictional game where the narrator appears as the link in the reader's identification with the narrated matter.