Maria dos Canos Serrados (2013), by Ricardo Adolfo, and the pulp recreation of reality

Abstract

This article analyses the novel Maria dos Canos Serrados (2013), by Ricardo Adolfo, aiming to understand the ways realism presents itself in 21st century’s Portuguese fiction. One perceives a change of meaning of the term realism in the scope of Portuguese literature, understood as a portrait of reality (in the 19th century), as an activist questioning of reality (with neorealism, in the 20th century) and as a resource in favor of the novel’s narrativity (21st century). Characterized by the dynamic rhythm that befits a cinematographic narrative and making use of space, denomination (according to Cassirer) and narrative implausibility (according to Santo Agostinho and Todorov), Ricardo Adolfo’s work presents the current diseases of society, in a social realism and pulp aesthetics that stand apart from the main strands of contemporary Portuguese novel.