FROM POSTMODERNISM TO THE HYPERCONTEMPORARY: MORPHOLOGY( IES) OF THE NOVEL AND (RE)FIGURATIONS OF THE CHARACTER

Abstract

With its occasional use of the formal techniques that characterize the postmodern novel – of the celebratory kind in particular –, Portuguese fiction written and published since 2000 combines the use of various intertextual and/or interartistic practices with a propensity for profoundly violent themes, featuring unbalanced, (quasi) pathological characters such as can be found in the second edition of Abel Botelho’s O Barão de Lavos (1898). Accordingly, we will endeavor, on the basis of a signifi cant group of novels by authors such as Valter Hugo Mãe, Afonso Cruz, Luís Carmelo or Pedro Marta Santos, to identify and illustrate the procedures that justify the proposing of a new subgenre – the intermedial novel – and, concomitantly to describe the formal aspects of this important narrative category.