A primazia da arte na fundamentação ontológica em Alegria Breve, de Vergílio Ferreira

Abstract

The present dissertation aims to analyze the establishment of Art as essential element in Vergílio Ferreira’s ontological grounding, electing the novel Alegria Breve (1965) as central object. It implies not only understanding such Portuguese author’s ontological dimension, his proximity and distance from some existentialist philosophers; but also reviewing his passage and rupture with Neo-realism, adhesion to some of the Nouveau Roman proposals and, above all, analyzing some aspects of the aesthetics of his novelistic project. The intertextual proposal between music and literature done in this research aims to exemplify how Art relates to the inquiries made by Vergílio Ferreira about the drama of human existence, as leitmotiv in his novelistic work. In this perspective, I intend to demonstrate how Music and Literature are inserted both in Vergílio Ferreira’s creative process and in the composition of Alegria Breve, as narrative elements. In order to do so, I am going to discuss the issues regarding experience and aesthetic feeling, as well as order and disorder, aiming to evidence how the artwork participates in the constitutional process of being, that is, its ontological character.