The project Portuguese-speaking women writers in the time of the Military Dictatorship and the Estado Novo in Portugal, Africa, Asia and emigration countries is the result of an international partnership involving IELT, CICS.NOVA/Faces of Eva, from the NOVA Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, and CRILUS/UR Études Romanes, of Université Paris Nanterre.
It aims to include women’s writing within the literary heritage, promoting the knowledge, discovery and dissemination of women writers who published between 1926 and 1974, as well as their works, given that, even in the 20th century, the canon of Portuguese literature was essentially male. The social, cultural and political context in which much of these women’s work emerged points to writing as an act of courage, in some cases punished by silencing, persecution or erasure.
The project is based on two distinct but complementary pillars:
1) The organisation of international conferences:
See/Review Women’s Writing in Portugal (1926-1974), 5 and 6 March 2020 (Almada Negreiros College - NOVA FCSH Campolide Campus)
Voir/Revoir l’écriture de femmes au Portugal (1926-1974), 9 October 2020 (Université Paris Nanterre)
Maria Judite de Carvalho : les frontières de l’humain face aux débris du monde, 15th March 2021 (Université Paris Nanterre)
Maria Archer: reflexes and reflections, 24 January 2022 (National Library of Portugal)
Natália Correia La voix rebelle (1923-2023), 26th October 2023 (Université Paris Nanterre and Maison de Portugal André de Gouveia, Cité Internationale)
The volume Portuguese Women Writers during the Military Dictatorship and the Estado Novo, Peter Lang - Brussels, published in 2023, brings together some of the most important contributions produced to date as a result of the project, the results of which having already been presented and discussed at the first two colloquia. This volume was organised by José Manuel da Costa Esteves, Isabel Henriques de Jesus and Teresa Sousa de Almeida (coord.) and forms part of the “Mondes de Langue Portugaise” collection, coordinated by Graça dos Santos.
The volume Maria Archer - Um percurso insubmisso (Maria Archer - A rebellious path), published in 2024 by Editora D’Ideias, brings together essays on one of the authors who forms part of the project’s database and complements the international Maria Archer colloquium: Reflexes and Reflections.
As part of the “France-Portugal 2022 Season”, two other international conferences were held on the theme of the project, which were approved and thus became part of the official programme:
Femmes écrivaines portugaises pendant da dictature militaire et l’État Nouveau (1926-1974), 24 February 2022 (Université Paris Nanterre)
Portuguese women writers during the Military Dictatorship and the Estado Novo. The fiftieth anniversary of New Portuguese Letters. Subversion and feminist solidarity, 13th and 14th October 2022 (Nova University)
In both of these, the New Portuguese letters of the ‘Three Marys’ were given pride of place, marking the fiftieth anniversary of their seizure by the Censorship, which generated a wave of solidarity from French women writers.
2) The creation of an “open” database.
This consists of cataloguing and analysing the literary production of Portuguese national and/or Portuguese-speaking authors from African, and Asian countries, or countries where Portuguese emigration created language and culture hubs, who published between 1926 and 1974.
The inclusion of authors/works in the database was determined by the following criteria:
- They are Portuguese and/or Portuguese speakers, although they may have published in languages other than Portuguese;
- They published between 1926 and 1974 (they may also have published before and/or after this period);
- They published “work”, conceived only as a publication in volume form (which does not invalidate other types of written and/or spoken intervention in newspapers or other media, translations, etc.) In other words, publication in volume form is a necessary, but not exclusive, criterion.
Each of the authors is presented in an “author record”, according to the fields defined therein, and each of their works is presented individually, according to the fields defined in the “work sheet”.
This database is an open ongoing resource supporting research and suggesting possibilities for dialogue between researchers. We would therefore ask for the co-operation of anyone who would like to help complete it with new authors or improve what already exists. Due to the length of some authors’ works, the record presented may be incomplete, and the research team is continuing to work on this. In such a case, the indication “under development” will be given in the author’s file.
The diversity and multiplicity of sources and resources make it impossible to present content in an entirely uniform way, a fact that we have resigned ourselves to after a certain amount of initial utopian thinking in which we thought that would possible. One of the fields labelled “genre” raised certain issues for the team due to the hybrid nature of certain works. The identifier [NI] means that the decision on how to fill this out has been left up to the cataloguer. We have used the “observations” field to explain certain doubts we had, but also to complete miscellaneous information that did not fit anywhere else.
The publication date of many works has not been found, so we have considered an “assigned date” based on elements that may have something to do with a date entered by the author such as the end of the book, or the date it was deposited in the library where it is kept, or indications (which are not always precise) registered in newspapers or critical works, or even in other works that refer to them.
We opted to use APA 6 standards, but here too, the specificity of certain situations forced us to adapt them so that the information provided was clear and provided the most detailed possible data for consultation.
The authorship (inventory) of the records is indicated at the end of the “author’s record”, and we wish to express many thanks to all the researchers who agreed to collaborate on this project, to those who participated in its revision and also to the authors or family members who not only made themselves available to provide additional information, but also granted the rights to use the images that appear in the records.
The initial team that conceived and structured the contents of the database was joined by a research fellow and a group of cataloguers, identified in the “Team” tab.
To enable users of the database to enjoy unpublished or little-known texts by the authors identified, the “Texts” tab was created, which includes literary works sent to us by authors, family members and researchers. The “Essays” tab provides for the inclusion of essays and biographical notes to complete the information on the writers and/or their work.
Contacts with the research team are made by filling in a form, located in the tab with that title.
The work of surveying authors who fulfil the criteria for inclusion in the database is very extensive and in itself constitutes a valuable research aid for anyone who wants to promote and deepen their knowledge of women writers whose work was published in the specified period of time. The “Initial list” tab can be added to by identifying more women writers, which will enrich the fields of literature, history and gender studies.
In addition to the two aspects already identified, project implementation involved other initiatives to publicise it and create networks with institutions and/or groups of people. Examples of these include:
Co-operation with the Camões Secondary School, Lisbon, supporting the development of work with students and teachers, in order to thematically and pedagogically explore some of the writers who form part of the project.
SNOB (bookshop and publisher) Meetings are held once a month to share knowledge of authors and works.
The inclusion of researchers from foreign universities, in order to broaden the initial core group and expand knowledge about the project.
Interviews with the media in order to communicate the scope and objectives of the project to the general public
This research, supported by the Gulbenkian Foundation through a grant to support research projects in the fields of Portuguese language and culture, was initially carried out almost entirely during the pandemic, so the conditions in which it was carried out reflected the difficulties experienced by the research team, particularly in consulting works available in different libraries, but also given the limited or impossible nature of face-to-face meetings. This continues with a new dynamic, relying on its core group of researchers, a research fellow and the collaboration of a team of cataloguers.
The number of authors in this database is still lower than the authors we identified during the first stage of the research and which we continue to identify as it progresses. Despite the constraints, the richness of the collection allows us to reaffirm the need to recover authors and works, to stabilise sources, to urgently make visible a veritable “underground world” in which women writers who published in their time still find themselves, despite the various efforts that have been made lately to give them a greater presence.
