Invenção da história e mimese dos sentimentos em A Costa dos Murmúrios de Lídia Jorge

Since its first publication, A Costa dos Murmúrios has attracted the critics' attention to the paradox of the explicit denial of its own authority over the historical facts that are part of the narration and its implicit, if qualified, affirmation of the same authority. This article also focuses on the sort of subliminal tension but from the angle of the literary construction of emotions, rather than examining either the poetics of historiographic metafiction or the role of memory in the narration of the past. Analyzing various aspects of A Costa dos Murmúrios (such as the predominant points of view, the structure of the narrative, the disintegration of the characters' identities, the emotional impact of a few vivid scences, the personalization of national events), a case is made for reading this novel as an intimate chronicle of historical facts.