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For many decades, José Saramago has been a staunch defender of the role of literature to both serve and be perceived as public discourse. When, in October 1998, he became the first Portuguese-language author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, his conviction was supported by the assurance that, at any rate, this particular writer's literary discourse was guaranteed to be widely (and globally) publicized. If, as Wlad Godzich has claimed, the severely limited possibility of public discourse in the contemporary world is compensated by the ever-multiplying variety of ways to publicize discourses ("Workshop"), Saramago has taken full advantage of the opportunities offered in this respect by the Nobel prize as probably the most effective institutionalized instrument of publicity that high literary discourse which is produced worldwide has at its annual disposal. His international visibility greatly amplified, Saramago could be seen in the last two years shuttling the globe and making globally publicized statements on behalf of the many political causes that have attracted his attention and support.
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Anna M. Klobucka is Professor in the Department of Portuguese at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She is co-editor of
After the Revolution: Twenty Years of Portuguese Literature 1974-1994 (Bucknell UP, 1997) and the author of
The Portuguese Nun: Formation of a National Myth (Bucknell UP, 2000; Portuguese translation from Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda). She co-edited (with Mark Sabine) a collection of essays on Fernando Pessoa,
Embodying Pessoa: Corporeality, Gender, Sexuality (Toronto UP, 2007; Portuguese translation from Assírio & Alvim). Her articles have appeared in
Colóquio/Letras, Luso-Brazilian Review, Portuguese Studies, Slavic and East European Journal, and
SubStance, among other journals.
