Martins and Eça: Transtextual Interpretations, Theories of History, Social and Economic Theory

João Carlos Graça ()

No wp042012, Working Papers from SOCIUS, Research Centre in Economic and Organisational Sociology at the School of Economics and Management (ISEG) of the University of Lisbon

Abstract: Several ideas taken seriously by the Portuguese economist, historian and social theorist Oliveira Martins (1845-94), and as such exposed in an academically respectable fashion, suffer a literary parody by his friend, the novelist Eça de Queirós (1845-1900), in his oriental novels, in a tonality in which dominate the chiaroscuro and the labyrinth-like mood. Amongst those are: the importance of randomness in history, Arian supremacy and the opposition between the so-called European and Chinese models of economy and society. Distancing himself from the alleged erudition and scientific positions of Martins, Eça allows himself to express sympathy towards the whole of human experience. The social reality towards which Eça was less sympathetic was indeed probably the Portuguese one.

Keywords: Ends of history; China; parody; economy and chrematistic; labyrinth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-04
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://socius.rc.iseg.ulisboa.pt/RePEc/soc/wpaper/wp042012.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:soc:wpaper:wp042012

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from SOCIUS, Research Centre in Economic and Organisational Sociology at the School of Economics and Management (ISEG) of the University of Lisbon Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mónica Fraga ().