Vicente – micro-readings by Cleonice Berardinelli

Abstract

Gil Vicente was one of the three portuguese poets (along with Luís de Camões and Fernando Pessoa) to whom D. Cleonice Berardinelli dedicated the most attention, reflection and reading passion. There are countless studies on the “comic poet”, and some of his contemporaries, published in classes, lectures, articles, books etc. In her Lattes we can follow this journey at least from the beginning of the 1940s, when, if I’m not mistaken, she ventured into a scenic exercise around the playwright’s work, until the beginning of the 2010s, when she relaunched a new and revised edition of her excellent selection of Vicente’s plays. Throughout more than half a century of dedication, many of the themes, characters, uses of language and dramatic strategies that Gil Vicente used were subject to the attentive and critical eye of D. Cleonice Berardinelli. As she herself defined, there were countless “micro-readings” of the Portuguese playwright’s work. In an effort to synthesize, I aim to remember and discuss the lines of force of these “micro-readings”, seeking to reveal the marks of this view and understand what he seeks to show us in Gil Vicente’s work.