OS SETE DORMENTES, DE ALEXANDRE HERCULANO

DO FOLHETIM AO LIVRO

Abstract

Alexandre Herculano (1810-1877), a Portuguese author, was the one who introduced the historical novel into the Portuguese language. Between 1839 and 1844, he began publishing what would be the first historical narratives, mainly in O Panorama, a nineteenth-century periodical, and selected some of them to compose the volumes of Lendas e Narrativas (1851). In 1970, the critic Vitorino Nemésio (1901-1978), when he was in charge of publishing Herculano's complete works at Livraria Bertrand, changed Lendas e Narrativas: he removed two literary texts, added the narratives that Herculano had left in the pages of O Panorama and, among them, as an appendix, collected Os Sete Dormentes, justifying that it was also a legend written by the nineteenth-century writer. This study aims to analyze Herculano’s text – Os Sete Dormentes – in relation to its literary style, but also in comparison with other historical fictions, to verify whether there are motivations and justifications for adding it as an appendix to Lendas e Narrativas. To this end, we dialogue with the claims of Alexandre Herculano and Vitorino Nemésio, but also with the proposals of João Lourival da Rocha Oliveira e Silva and Maria de Fátima Marinho.