Imaginary Geographies in Portuguese and Lusophone-African Literature - Narratives of Discovery and Empire (Hardcover)

This study interrogates a series of utopian projections that have informed Portuguese and Luso-African letters and culture since the Renaissance. Concentrating on three crucial historical moments - Portugal's tenuous hegemony in the Asian seas in the 16th century, the collapse of its colonial empire in the mid-1970s, and finally, the post-independence period of re-evaluating nationalisms in Africa - the study examines the familiar "long narrative" which casts the Portuguese Discoveries as an inaugural and enabling event in Europe's conquest of the world.