Estrada de Prata

‘Silver road’, or ‘estrada prateada’ in Portuguese, is one the canon metaphors in Baroque literature. I have chosen this metaphor as the name to my blog for very specific issues, which concern literature and art from this period. These matters are the centres of my research and work. This metaphor was taken from Father Mateus Ribeiro’s long novellaAlívio de Tristes, Consolação de Queixosos (‘Relief the Sad, Consolation of the Suffering’), written in mid 17th century, during a troubled time when fiction was legitimized within Baroque literature. By invoking the Horatian recommendations – ‘prodesse’ and ‘delectare’ –, the Aristotelean ‘eutrapélia’, and David Huet’s Traitté de l’Origine des Romans(Treatise on the Origin of Romances), one justifies the moral and pedagogical tone of the discourse. Above all, what I find fascinating is that ‘estrada prateada’ reiterates one of the most fundamental topics in allegorical literature – the concept of the ‘homo viator’ (the man as a traveller), and the idea of human life as a ‘peregrinatio’ (travel, peregrination).

Such a wide topic has allowed me to explore other matters apart from Baroque literature, namely travel writing, which is as effective as far as its symbolic discourse is concerned. In this genre, all visual elements are of utmost importance. Thus, from the visual representation, we shall discuss painting, photography, and, finally, poetry, which are other forms of travelling.

I shall write about all the things I like and that have touched me. I shall traverse memories that only make sense to me but that I will present as clear as possible to everyone. I will share some of my work, writing, and images.

(Tradução de Gustavo Infante e Orrin Thomas)