The dethronement of historical and mythical figures in Portuguese novels in the eighties and nineties

Abstract

This paper will demonstrate that the representation of the national mythological heroes in Portuguese novels changes from the eighties to the nineties. The eighties were a decade of a radical ‘iconoclasm’. The ironic representation of the heroes inverted their status as ideal, mythical heroes and turned them into ‘grotesque bodies’. In the nineties these heroes were interwoven in a context of re-written history and reflections at a meta-fictional level, focusing on showing other versions of historical truth.