The next session of the THELEME Interarts & Intermedia Seminars will include presentations from Maria da Paz Carvalho, Patrícia Passos de Sá and Alexis Viegas, all promising MA students in Comparative Studies, who share an interest in our areas of research.
 

• Maria da Paz Carvalho, “Espectralidade e aparição em Vergílio Ferreira e Teixeira de Pascoaes: Para Sempre e São Paulo”
• Patrícia Passos de Sá, “Na pista de Frankenstein: reflexões sobre o monstro na contemporaneidade”
• Alexis Viegas, “A interdisciplinaridade e a intermedialidade nos videojogos: o caso de The Last of Us: Part II”

As is tradition, this meeting will also include a rather informal moment dedicated to discussing the situation of the group and its subgroups and to share advice and information. It will also include a small Christmas aperitive.

The meeting will take place on Thursday, 15th of December, between 15:00 and 17:00 in room B112.G (FLUL Library building), with a hybrid format. Zoom link.
 

Abstracts
[translated]

Maria da Paz Carvalho, “Spectrality and Apparition in Vergílio Ferreira and Teixeira de Pascoaes: Para Sempre and São Paulo”
 

São Paulo is a biographical novel by Teixeira de Pascoaes, published in 1934, and Para Sempre is a novel by Vergílio Ferreira, published in 1983. While the first is a retelling of Paul’s life, in accordance with the biblical texts, the second tells the history of Paul, narrator and main character, who comes back to his childhood home, where he meets spectres from his memory and imagination. My dissertation project aims to map and list some stylistic and narrative strategies used by the authors in these two works in order to create an effect of spectrality. In other words, my concern is to understand how Teixeira de Pascoaes and Vergílio Ferreira achieve a poetics of spectrality. In this session, I am going to present some of the issues raised by these works and the main axes that have oriented this investigation which, as of now, has led me to a study of the relation between this works and image, space and rhythm.

Maria da Paz Carvalho is attending the master’s degree in Comparative Studies of the Faculdade de Letras of Lisbon University. She is currently writing the dissertation Espectralidade e aparição em Vergílio Ferreira e Teixeira de Pascoaes: Para Sempre e São Paulo. Within the same institution, she taught as lector in the course “Fundamental Texts.” In 2021, she participated to the III Encontro de Jovens Investigadores em Literatura Comparada (EJICOMP) with the presentation O canto e a fertilidade em Empfängnis de Zemlinsky, an intermedia study of this XIX century song.

* * *

Patrícia Passos de Sá, “On the trail of Frankenstein: Reflections on the Monster in Modernity”

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) still appears to be a significant work in the contemporary era, considering the recent scientific and technological advances that bring humanity closer to a future when transcending the human being’s biological dimension is deemed possible. In my Master’s dissertation, I suggest an analysis of Frankenstein’s echoes in two contemporary literary works: Almudena Grandes’s La Madre de Frankenstein (2020), and Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein: A Love Story. In my reading I discuss the notions of “monster” and “creator”, “human” and “humanity”, “transhuman” and “posthuman” and how the two novels approach these concepts. In this presentation, I will mostly focus on the theme of monstrosity. What exactly is a monster? What makes a being monstrous? How may the possibilities presented by the debate on transhumanism and posthumanism be monstrous? These questions will be discussed as I return to the motives and the works analyzed in my dissertation. What is more, these issues could provide some starting points for future investigations on other media beyond the literary sphere, where the theme of monstrosity may also find fertile ground.

Patrícia Sá is pursuing a Master’s degree on Comparative Studies at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon and is currently finishing her dissertation on literary echoes of Frankenstein, posthumanism and monstrosity. She is an author in the horror anthology of short stories Sangue Novo (2021), which won the Great Adamastor Award of Portuguese Fantastic Literature of 2022. Her short story "Amor" was shortlisted for the Adamastor Award of Fantastic Fiction of 2022. She is also a part of the anthologies Sangue: Uma Antologia Portuguesa (2022) and Almanaque Steampunk 2022 (2022). She is a content writer at the website Fábrica do Terror. Additionally, she has co-organized the event «Nosferatu: 100 Anos de Terror» and is currently working on a continuation of said project in book format.

* * *

Alexis Viegas, “Interdisciplinarity and intermediality in videogames: the case of The Last of Us: Part II”

Narratological approaches to videogames were widely contested in the early stages of Game Studies as a field. Ludologists mostly opposed the idea that theoretical and methodological tools from areas related to traditional media – mainly Literary Studies and Film Studies – were needed. These researchers were concerned that perspectives influenced by theories applicable to other media would take precedence over the development of specific approaches to videogames. Nevertheless, the technological evolution of the last two decades have turned interdisciplinarity and intermediality into indisputable necessities. The Last of Us: Part II emerges as a result of this process of technical innovation where narrative production has gained increased relevancy, closely matching that of gameplay. In this presentation, I aim to discuss how Part II is an example for the narrative potential of the medium, but also for intermedial and interdisciplinary approaches to videogames.

Alexis F. Viegas is a Master’s student in Comparative Studies at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Languages, Literature and Culture from the same institution with a Minor specialization in Comparative Arts and Culture, and another in Communication and Culture. In 2022, he co-organized the conference “Nosferatu: 100 Anos de Terror” and co-edited a homonymous publication coming in early 2023. He is currently an editorial board member at estrema: interdisciplinary journal of humanities. He is now preparing his master’s thesis in the fields of Narratology and Game Studies about analepsis in The Last of Us: Part II (2020).