'What is that to me?' Jorge de Sena's Sinais de fogo, poetry, and testimony during the Spanish civil war

Miranda, Rui

Abstract

© Institute of Modern Languages Research 2020. The Spanish civil war is featured in the works of Jorge de Sena as a moment which created a new level of political awareness and militancy. Sena's incomplete, posthumously published novel Sinais de fogo (1979) [Signs of Fire (1999)], which draws from Sena's biographical experiences as a young student in 1936 Lisbon and Figueira da Foz, attempts a fictional inscription, for future remembrance, of the conflict's impact on António de Oliveira Salazar's Estado Novo regime, which supported the alzamiento and Franco, and on the living conditions and political positioning of the generations which endured it. To this end, Sena's considerations on poetry and testimony will assist in shedding light on the novel's questioning of the roles and functions of (and relations between) art, politics, history, and individual memory. Ultimately, the novel will resist heterotopian escapes and prompt a reflection on the meaning(s) and purpose(s) of communitas.

Citation

Miranda, R. (2020). 'What is that to me?' Jorge de Sena's Sinais de fogo, poetry, and testimony during the Spanish civil war. Journal of Romance Studies, 20(1), 51-74. https://doi.org/10.3828/jrs.2020.3

• Journal Article Type: Review
• Acceptance Date: Jun 6, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Mar 1, 2020
• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Jul 3, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 2, 2022
• Journal: Journal of Romance Studies
• Print ISSN: 1473-3536
• Electronic ISSN: 1752-2331
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 20
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 51-74
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/jrs.2020.3
• Keywords: Jorge de Sena; Sinais de fogo; Spanish civil war; Communitas; Poetic testimony; Roberto Esposito; Jacques Derrida; Linguistics and Language; Literature and Literary Theory; Cultural Studies; Visual Arts and Performing Arts; Language and Linguistics
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/936782
• Publisher URL: https://online.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/jrs.2020.3
• Related Public URLs: https://online.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/loi/jrs
• Contract Date: Jul 3, 2018