Cosmopolitan, Vernacular and Gender in the Circulation and Aesthetical Reception of African Literature Written in Portuguese

This project combines a focus on the dissemination and reception of contemporary Portuguese-language African literature across the Lusophone world with attention on the spread of this body of work into the English literary world through translation. Drawing theoretically on Walkowitz, Buescu, and Helgesson, among others, the project further examines gender as a central mediating category in the circulation and reception of literature.

The project focuses on a contemporary body of work by several paradigmatic authors, namely Mia Couto, Paulina Chiziane, and José Eduardo Agualusa, from Mozambique and Angola, who have been published internationally. The study combines an investigation of the dissemination of this literature and its literary reception and critique with literary analyses of how these authors draw on aesthetic practices of cosmopolitan and vernacular models. This involves an investigation of translations, circulation, reviews and literary criticism that are produced in different geographical Lusophone contexts and literary systems, as well as in those that are Anglophone. As such, it will investigate whether there is a connection between the various degrees to which they draw upon cosmopolitan models and/or incorporate vernacular elements (African, and oral languages, and the local) and their success and circulation in these literary markets. Furthermore, how do gender politics and features interact and mediate with the vernacular and cosmopolitan models in this process?