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COPYRIGHT 2004 Modern Humanities Research Association
Within the framework of a research project into women and the Enlightenment in the second half of the eighteenth century in Portugal, the Grupo Galabra is developing a study on Teresa de Mello Breyner, the Condessa do Vimieiro, also known as Tirse (1)--or more usually 'Tirce'. The origin of this pseudonym is, we believe, the shepherds Tirsis and Tirsi of Virgil and Sannazaro respectively. (2) We prefer Tirse. The object of this study is to compile a record of the network of her relationships and the strategies (political, cultural, literary, etc.) adopted by her.
Given the semi-clandestine character of these strategies, and their implications beyond what is considered the strictly literary, our interest is to try and understand the relationship between culture and power. We cannot limit ourselves to the study of her published literary output. We must therefore consider other types of documents that may shed light on the individual or collective strategies of the producers and mediators involved, and, for this reason, her correspondence is one of the most important documentary sources we have. In this way, according to Elias Torres, we should focus
Nos factores respons[sz]veis da elaboracao e transmissao, da mediacao tal como aqui entendida, (mais mesmo que nos re-produtores) [e importante] perspectivarmos as produces destes re-produtores ou como resultado da accao mediadora de outros ou, tambem, e aspecto ainda de maior relevo, como parte da estrategia mediadora e program[sz]tica dos seus fabricantes; [e] pormos em destaque que, frente C visibilidade efectista resultado duma mundivisao romentica, e C mediacao, muitas vezes invisivel que, em casos como este, devemos acudir. (3)
Inevitably this study has had its difficulties, due to the poor state of preservation of many of the eighteenth-century documents and because we are dealing with a woman who, because of her circumstances, occupies, despite the undeniable importance of her participation in the culture and society of the time, a place in the shadows of the history of literature. (4) As will become evident, the fact that she was a woman conditioned Mello Breyner's attitude, justifying a strategy of concealment, and focusing her work on mediation, and avoiding as far as possible public attention. This strategy also conditions the place she has been granted by literary critics until now. Critics were more concerned with the easily visible agents rather than with the study of the influence of the repertoires used or the network of relationships in which they could be found.
A concern for the ways the repertoires (whether ideological or aesthetic) were infiltrated, and the function of specific women in this process forces us to concentrate on other ways of introducing them (be it in the literary field, culturally or elsewhere) beyond the world of books, and the pronouncements of their authors. Considering the importance of other agents who functioned as catalysts in the field, although they may not have been published, as in the case of Mello Breyner, Leonor de Almeida or the Duke of Lafoes, and noting the semi-private nature of this documentation (as we will see, the number of people reading the letters could be quite high) as a way of penetrating into the repertoires, implies accepting the fact that ideas circulating at court or among various European groups of the enlightened could arrive in Portugal without benefit of conventional translation or through the importation of foreign books. Finally, the existence of networks of social relationships between men and women of the Enlightenment from various countries, resulted in an interchange of ideas and products that was not only restricted to one socio-geographic space.
Nearly 350 letters of the Countess of Vimieiro have been preserved in the Biblioteca Publica in Evora and in the Torre do Tombo. The Biblioteca collection includes six letters written by the Countess of Vimieiro to Manuel do Cenaculo, three from the Count of Vimieiro to Cenaculo, one from the Countess, one from Mello Breyner to a brother, and an ode entitled 'Desafogo da Saudade'. The second, more numerous, group is part of the Nucleo da Casa Fronteira-Alorna preserved in the Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais-Torre do Tombo. There are three catalogued collections (order numbers 222, 223 and 224), which comprise, respectively, 108, 132 and 94 documents. The majority are letters written by the Countess to the Marquise of Alorna, her daughters Leonor and Maria (later Countess of Ribeira) and to Madame de Thun. No. 224 also includes poems by Tirse. These documents are in varying states of preservation, which in some cases makes reading difficult.
Those letters that are dated were written 1770-95, twenty-five fundamental years in the history of the Portuguese Ilustracom (Age of Enlightenment). They encompass the final years of the reign of Don Jose and the entire reign of Dona Maria I, who came to the throne in 1777 and was removed from power in 1793, when his son, Don Joao VI, became regent.
The transcription and classification of the letters, as well as the editing and identification of the various persons referred to in the letters (still incomplete), more than justifies our work as a 'study in progress'; certain of our ideas must be considered hypotheses at this stage to be developed in due course. We will in particular present information that we consider should redefine the position accorded to Teresa de Mello Breyner within the area of study, the eighteenth century in Portugal, and contribute to shedding new light on the analysis of this period and the role of certain Portuguese women, and the evaluation of literary works produced in Portugal during the second half of the century.
On reading correspondence from Teresa de Mello Breyner to her friend Leonor de Almeida, we found evidence that helped to identify a new text that can now be added to her published works, which included only the tragedy, Osmia (1788). (5) The Idea de hum elogio historico de Maria Theresa Archiduquesa de Austria ... escrita em francez por M. M**** (Marie-Caroline Murray) was published in Lisbon in the Officina of Francisco Luiz Ameno in 1781. The original text had been published in Brussels by J. Van den Berghen in the same year under the title Essai d'un eloge historique de Marie-Therese, archiduchesse d'Autriche, imperatrice-douairiere ... par M. M****.
In this Elogio, Murray reviews the circumstances of the raising of Marie Theresa to the throne of Austria. In particular, she refers to the attempts of neighbouring rulers to occupy part of the territory of the Austrian Crown, which she believes was a consequence of Marie Theresa being a woman. She remarks that any eulogy to the empress ought to include reference to her beauty, perseverance, courage, bravery, etc., and she finally comforts the queen's subjects and praises her efforts to educate her son, the crown prince of Austria, Prince Joseph.
The existence of the Elogio has raised important questions, such as how significant was the translation to the Portuguese literary establishment of the late eighteenth century and to the circulation of repertoires. This will be one of the main objectives of our future work, but at this stage it deserves some consideration.
The fact that the Elogio is a translation does not mean that it should be considered as a 'minor' element within the body of Teresa de Mello Breyner's work. For us the objective is not the identification of individual elements in her output, but to try to understand the role she played within the system, as well as the position of the Countess of Vimieiro in the literary establishment. To achieve this, an 'original' work such as Osmia and a translation such as the Elogio are both useful. The choice of work to be translated, and the relation between author and translator, are fundamental elements in our study, not only from an information point of view, which is necessary to our research, but also from a methodological viewpoint. We have applied the research carried out by Itamar Even-Zohar in this field to the specific case of the Portuguese literary establishment at the end of the eighteenth century to define the specific function of translation for Portuguese writers of the Enlightenment:
When new literary models are emerging, translation is likely to become one of the means of elaborating the new repertoire. Through the foreign works, features (both principles and elements) are introduced into the home literature which did not exist there before. These include possibly not only new models of reality to replace the old and established ones that are no longer effective, but a whole range of other features as well, such as a new (poetic) language, or compositional patterns and techniques. It is clear...
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