A book and its uses: Camões, Saramago and the empire writing

Abstract

This article proposes a reading of the play Que farei com este livro?, by José Saramago, from its intertextual relations with the verses of Os Lusíadas. While accompanying the difficulties experienced by the poet to publish his epic, the contemporary text returns to the debate about the value of literary work and, at the same time, from the analysis of its own contradictions, reflects upon the fate of the Portuguese Empire.