O último dos Ramires ilustres

Abstract

As Ofélia Paiva Monteiro observes, A ilustre casa de Ramires (1900) is built around Gonçalo and thus characterized as a “character novel” (2014). Therefore, I propose here an interpretation of the protagonist and the novel based on the analysis of technical-narrative strategies, “rhetorical-discursive” resources, linked to “actional devices” (action and motivation), which support the “figuration” (Reis, 2015) of Gonçalo Mendes Ramires. In the theoretical terms of Jens Eder (2014), I observe the character as a “textual artefact” and “represented being” (with body, mentality, sociability, agency) to understand his “thematic/symbolic” representation and his “symptomatic” relationship with the context of production/reception of the work, specifically related to nationalism and colonialism.