Eugénio de Castro between Literature and Science

Orientalism as Collaboration

Abstract

“Eugénio de Castro between Literature and Science: Orientalism as Collaboration” offers a case study of the fin-de-siècle works of Portuguese poet Eugénio de Castro (1869-1944) as illustrative of the aestheticization of scholarly/scientific knowledge about the East. This study is thus based on two premises: literary orientalism as a western discourse that feeds on a shared imaginary about the East, and scholarly/scientific orientalism as a specialized field of production, circulation and reception of knowledge (i.e. oriental studies). Based on Castro’s case study, I put forward the hypothesis of an interaction between the fields of literary production and scholarly/scientific orientalism under the framing concept of arrière-texte (Gladieu, Pottier and Trouvé 2013). In order to explore how Castro’s oeuvre may have been informed and shaped particularly by the work of Portuguese orientalists, without however disregarding his privileged connections to French orientalism, I propose a formal approach through the analysis of networks of collaboration. After briefly discussing the presence of the East in Castro’s fin-de-siècle work, I highlight the role played by the Curso Superior de Letras, a Lisbon-based school for higher education, in the poet’s orientalist training (1885-1889). This institutional setting enabled him to establish interpersonal networks, namely with Guilherme de Vasconcelos Abreu and Consiglieri Pedroso. These networks will be complemented with the analysis of plausible and (in)formal relationships, in particular with Francisco Maria Esteves Pereira, specialist in Ethiopian studies, as well as with the intellectuals Teófilo Braga and Joaquim Mendes dos Remédios. The purpose is to unveil the agencies, either manifest or latent, contributing to the poet’s creative process and who are part of his orientalist arrière-texte. Ultimately, this case study will show that orientalism is a collaborative system of knowledge production, circulation and reception between scientific institutions and the literary sphere.