Fernando Namora and the Novo cancioneiro: a few feet of land in the middle of the swamp

Abstract

In Portugal, Neorealism, after an intense period of theorizing about conceptions of art and literature, in which it was struggled with the Second Modernism, affirmed itself, although some works had already been published in the second half of the previous decade, in the early 40s of the twentieth century. To this statement contributed the organization of paradigmatic collections of the new realism that was defended. The Novo Cancioneiro was the first collection, with ten poetry books by different poets, being the first book, Terra, by Fernando Namora. In these poems, is possible to understand the literary conception defended by the young neorealists and we can also recognize the human and literary example that Fernando Namora gave to all his generation. Terra was, in the end, a necessary book, a stone in the swamp of magazine Presença, a gateway to Neorealism, and a business card from its author’s literary work.