Landscapes of silence, solitude and sympathy. Franciscan resonance in Alentejo narratives

Abstract

The Franciscan presence in the Alentejo has been enduring, and is visible in the built heritage throughout this region. The Franciscan worldview and its spiritual legacy in Portuguese culture have been acknowledged by scholars, but remain little-researched from the perspective of the landscapes found in Alentejonarratives. Are these landscapes perceived as triggering contemplation and particularly appropriate to stir religious and spiritual feelings grounded on the experience of silence? Are there landscapes of the soul that overflow from the religious sites and echo Franciscan ethics? Embracing a phenomenological perspective and framed by ecocriticism, this presentation aims at understanding how Alentejo landscapes—commonly associated with places of silence, solitude, serenity—often arouse contemplative attitudes and Franciscan resonances in contemporary Portuguese literature. Drawing on the LITESCAPE database and from a bulk of narratives anchored in the Alentejo, we selected a corpus of 30 excerpts from 10 authors (from the late 19th to the 21st century): Conde de Ficalho, Fialho de Almeida, Florbela Espanca,Manuel da Fonseca, Antunes da Silva, Urbano Tavares Rodrigues, Sebastião daGama, Almeida Faria, Afonso Cruz, José Luís Peixoto. A close reading of the excerpts reveals that silent and solitary landscapes in the Alentejo, either sites near chapels/convents or just isolated places surrounded by nature, lead protagonists/narrators to acknowledge sympathetic feelings towards non-humans and to express a Franciscan way of understanding life and nature, opening it to the mystery, bringing sacralization to the secular love of things. We conclude that, alongside the Franciscan built heritage, there is also a rooted Franciscanism in Alentejo narratives, a legacy of a spiritual materiality emerging from the immersive contemplation of this region’s silent landscapes. This literary legacy could complement a broader outline of Franciscan landscapes beyond the materiality of the religious built heritage, thereby enhancing a more comprehensive meaning of Alentejo landscapes of the soul.