Figures of China and Macao in two portuguese navigations in the Twentieth Century: consolidation and deconstruction

Abstract

During the nineteenth and the twentieth century, in Portugal, the orientalism, an occidental style to know and better dominate the civilizations of the Orient, played an essential role in the country’s colonial strategy to return to the Orient. In these circumstances, in the field of Portuguese literature, a repository of stereotyped figures of the Orient, more specifically, of China and Macao was formed. This article aims to demonstrate consolidation and deconstruction of such figures of China and Macao manifested in O Ccaminho do Oriente, by Jaime do Inso and in Nocturno em Macau, by Maria Ondina Braga, two literary works about Macao, written in Portuguese in the twentieth century. Thus, we intend to sketch out more clearly changes that occurred in the position taken by the Portuguese people in the face of the Chinese world, during a period in which the colonial Portuguese Empire was coming to an end.