A PRESENÇA DE MONTAIGNE NA ESCRITA DE JOSÉ SARAMAGO

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate how Portuguese writer José Saramago's essayistic writing approaches the theories on the essay genre developed by philosopher Michel de Montaigne. Saramago's connection with Montaigne appears throughout Saramago's work and, for this reason, it will be necessary to take a panoramic view of his ideas, tracing a path that leads to the novel Manual de Pintura e Caligrafia (1977). The aim is to discuss the signs of the essayistic bias, that is, that type of writing which is conscious of the writer's craft and the act of writing and which reveals this consciousness in the writing itself, in a metalinguistic way, because it focuses on the construction of literary creation. Saramago builds a reflection intrinsic to his writing that makes the writer discuss, deeply and seriously, the craft and responsibility of dealing with words, rehearsing an attempt to understand the world that surrounds him and how he surrounds the world, while at the same time composing his prose fiction.