Henriques e D. Teresa”, de Agustina Bessa-Luís: variações sobre a Monarquia Lusitana

Using the heuristic tools of medieval studies, this essay analyses the medieval reverberations in “Afonso Henriques e D. Teresa”, one of the short stories of Fama e segredo na história de Portugal (2006). By mobilizing the possible sources accessed by Agustina Bessa-Luís and the layers that were interposed over time, the study shows the assumptions that animated the productive archaeology she led and the meaning of the recreation of the of Portugal’s birth. By identifying the sources used and, above all, their proximity to Fr. António Brandão's Monarquia Lusitana (1632), this essay exposes how the author follows, distorts or subverts it, depending on her historiographical scepticism or on the secret she wants to uncover. In the same sense, the legends she openly rejects turn out to be indispensable both to the postulation of the enigma and to the discovery of the crime whose content she dears not say. In a medievalist version marked by a permanently modalizing discourse, Agustina adds to the realistic representation of the Middle Ages “as they were”, animated by historical figures and their conflicts of power and legitimacy, a Middle Ages as “they might have been”. To the romantic idea of the Middle Ages as the cradle of the nation, she contrasts the grotesque extremes of violence and the subsequent crisis of identity.