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Remembering the War, Imagining the Nation: The First World War Memoirs of the “Portuguese Renaissance”

2017; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-319-66851-2_3

2193-7656

Ernesto Castro Leal,

Historical Education and Society

In this paper several memoirs related with the First World War and published in Porto editions of Renascença Portuguesa, dealing with Portuguese participation on the European western front, will be reassessed critically. The representative sample includes books published between 1918 and 1921 by former combatants of the Portuguese Expeditionary Force. Amongst the authors of these war narratives, where one might highlight the Memórias da Grande Guerra of doctor, schoolteacher and republican intellectual Jaime Cortesão (a doctor of the militia reserve), are Captain Augusto Casimiro, Lieutenant João Pina de Morais, General Manuel Gomes da Costa, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexandre Malheiro, Lieutenant-Colonel Dr Eduardo Pimenta, and militia reserve doctor Alfredo Barata da Rocha, as well as Captain Carlos Afonso dos Santos (pseudonym Carlos Selvagem), a Mozambique war veteran. Five topics will be developed in connection with these memoir writers: narratives of war (memory, history and legitimacy); patriotism and redemption; saudade and duty; life and death; training and leadership.