The mythology of the Portuguese colonial world in decay in António Lobo Antunes’ romanesque prose

Abstract

The colonial imagery of a great Portuguese empire becomes the material revisited by the singular narrator of the novel Os cus de Judas (1979), by António Lobo Antunes, since the tragic reminiscences of the colonial war experienced by him on Angolan soil are resumed. In this fateful return, the narrator projects a destructive image of the values that were part of his training as the “expected Portuguese being”, so that, when demobilizing such thoughts, the subject finds another way to look at the past without necessarily have to pay him homage. Consequently, in the narration, specific strategies are developed so that the mythology that regimented the narrative of the Portuguese colonial world is put into decomposition. It is these strategies that characterize the focus of the writing undertaken here, in order to analyze how a given national epos model is questioned and, thus, receives a new accent within the Antunian narrative in focus. Therefore, the conceptions of Eduardo Lourenço (2001, 2016) about the disenchantment cultivated in the Portuguese scenario and Bakhtin’s (1993, 1997) theorization about the characteristics of epicity are part of the theoretical framework of this article.