Ironia e colonialismo em A ilustre casa de Ramires de Eça de Queirós

Abstract

Resuming Mário Sacramento’s book, Eça de Queirós – an aesthetics of irony, from 1945, this paper aims to investigate the idea of colonialism present in A ilustre casa de Ramires. The novel was read by most critics in a very conservative way. They identified in this novel a strong adherence of the writer to Portuguese neocolonialism, which would characterize Salazarist politics a few years later. This paper seeks to demonstrate the ambiguities that the structural irony of the novel produces regarding Gonçalo’s trip to Africa at the end of the novel; a trip that provided him with greater enrichment from the exploration of a land in the colony of Mozambique.