WHAT: A talk by Cecília Amaral Figueiredo, author of Ary dos Santos: A Voz da Resistência à Ditadura Salazarista.
WHERE: Prince Henry Society Reading Room at the Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese-American Archives, Claire T. Carney Library, UMass Dartmouth
WHEN: 5:30 PM, Tuesday April 15, 2014
Light refreshments will be served.
~ The event is free and open to the public ~
ARY DOS SANTOS: THE VOICE OF THE RESISTANCE TO THE SALAZAR DICTATORSHIP
April 1, 2014 – North Dartmouth, MA. On Tuesday April 15, 2014, the Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese American Archives at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, in collaboration with the Consulate of Portugal in New Bedford will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Portuguese Carnation Revolution with a talk by Cecília Amaral Figueiredo, who will present and sign her book Ary dos Santos: A Voz da Resistência à Ditadura Salazarista.
The event is free and open to the public and will take place at 5:30 PM in the Prince Henry Society Reading Room at the Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese-American Archives. Light refreshments will be served.
In Ary dos Santos: A Voz da Resistência à Ditadura Salazarista, Figueiredo investigates the role played by the poetry of the Portuguese writer Ary dos Santos in giving voice to the feelings of thousands of Portuguese silenced and oppressed by the Salazar regime, which came to an end on April 25, 1974. At once intellectual and popular, Ary dos Santos’ lyric voice, argues Figueiredo, became a means by which the poet and his readers survived and resisted oppression.
According to Rui Zink, a Portuguese writer, cultural commentator and professor at Lisbon’s Universidade Nova, who wrote the preface to Figueiredo’s book, Ary dos Santos was “what one could call a ‘public poet,’” who has been neglected by academic studies. With Ary dos Santos: A Voz da Resistência à Ditadura Salazarista, Cecília Figueiredo begins to fill that lacuna and does it with generosity and attention, helping us “read and see” the merit of a writer who called himself “the poet of the people.” Applying the analytical and theoretical concepts of poetic resistance developed by Brazilian literary critic and historian Alfredo Bosi, and comparing the poet’s life and work to that of Russian poet, playwright, artist and actor Vladimir Mayakovsky, the author demonstrates that Ary dos Santos’ poems, whose language “abounds with versatility, irreverence, and vital restlessness,” make the poet and his readers allies within a larger act of collective resistance.
Cecília Figueiredo is a PhD candidate in Luzo-Afro-Brazilian Studies and Culture at UMassD, where she is working on a dissertation project that analyzes the concept of crisis in 20th century Portuguese novel. She has taught romance languages at the secondary and college levels in both the U.S. and Portugal. Currently, she teaches at Dartmouth High School.
The entrance to the Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese-American Archives is located on the campus side of the Claire T. Carney Library. For access, from Parking Lot 13, please follow the footpath to the library entrance, exit the building on the opposite side, and proceed to the right, to the archives’ entrance.
For further information, contact 508-999-8684 or email spacheco@umassd.edu.