From Portuguese letters to new Portuguese letters: subversive writing that crosses time

Abstract

The letter genre has changed over the centuries, passing from a means of communication to a cultural artifact in the present century. The same is true of Portuguese letters, by Mariana Alcoforado (2003), a collection of five love letters from Sóror Mariana Alcoforado, from the convent of Breja in Portugal, to the knight of Chamilly. In order to understand the importance of the letter genre for the conception of New Portuguese letters (2010), the objective of this study is to apprehend the change that occurs in the direction of the discourse of Cartas Portuguesas (2003), in a particular way from Mariana to Cavaleiro de Chamilly, for New Portuguese letters (2010) which is conceived as a kind of open letter to several women. In order to achieve this objective, the theories of Foucault (2006), Gomes (2004) and Landowski (2002) were used.