Affective Medievalism in A rainha morta e o rei saudade by António Cândido Franco

Abstract

Starting from the concept of affective medievalism framed by Prendergast and Trigg (2018), in the novel A rainha morta e o rei saudade, by Ant.nio Cândido Franco (2013), we explore the similarities in which medieval and contemporary desire define the composition of the past, we analyze the hermeneutics of empathy that underlies the novel, as well as reinvents Pedro’s memorial gesture and his own mythification of history. The writer’s affective medievalism frames a transforming practice, structured according to the author’s temporal, cultural and affective context. In the remembrance of the past, Pedro’s memory is extended and Franco converts it into a myth, materializing the imagination of a past time in a future that looks at it as a founding myth. To demonstrate it, I consider some differences between two versions of this story (the first, from 1990), to point out the re-elaborations of the 2003 novel and the affinity of the wonderful episodes, the recomposition of the new narrative device and its repercussions in the mythification of longing. More than an idea of the Middle Ages, A rainha morta e o rei saudade emphasizes an idealization of love. Anchored in the harmony of a glorifying image – from Pedro’s past love and from the author, in the exercise of memory that exacerbates the king’s medieval remembrance – and of love for the past, the author enacts the obsession that connects him to the loveof Pedro and Inês. He revisits them without disguising how much the final result also reflects his changes.