Few subjects will be as universal as motherhood, with which perhaps only death can rival. The history of motherhood is therefore almost as old as the world itself. Often secondary figures, less often protagonists, maternal figures often occupy key roles in the different narrative trajectories. Considering the unbreakable bond, the blood kinship, that they establish with their sons or daughters, maternal figures enjoy a privileged position from which conflicts can be brought to the textual surface. On the other hand, mothers are traditionally expected to manifest a set of values and behaviors, whose transgression meets one of the most important vocations of literature, the exploration of setbacks. In addition, the maternal characters are likely to illustrate social, historical, religious, and ethical aspects of the cultures in which they are conceived, and are therefore an important source of access to the ideologies of motherhood in force at the time the texts were produced. Maternal figures, then, are a fertile object of study, being able to show and convey a wide range of cultural meanings.

Despite the universality of the theme of motherhood, its aesthetic realizations are always particular and individual. For this reason, this cycle of four seminars in the month of May aims to highlight the centrality of maternal characters in different literatures, problematizing from an immanent perspective the role that these characters have to play in the texts in which they are drawn and, at the same time, to perspective them as autonomous forces integrated in a broader cultural system with transtextual and transhistorical implications.

Seminar I (05/07/2021):

Marta Várzeas | “The boy from his mother”: some aspects of the characterization of the mother figure in Greek mythology

Tatiana Faia | Immortal and Mortal Mothers in the Homeric tradition

Daniel Floquet | Avenging Iphigenia: Maternity and Violence in Aeschylus’ Oresteia

Link to the Zoom Session: https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/84699611629

Seminar II (05/14/2021):

Maria do Rosário Ferreira | The Children of Eve and the Mother of Adam

Pedro Monteiro | “Moved by that rage with which Medea slew her own children”: some notes on maternal figures in 19th-century narratives

Mafalda Sofia Gomes | ich heize dich ze dôde slân: tyrant mothers in middle-middle-German narrative texts

Link to Session Zoom: https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/89133921741

Seminar III (05/21/2021):

Maria da Natividade Pires | The Representation of Mothers in Children’s Literature – The Public and Private Sphere

Ivana Schneider | She Dreamed Me Before I Existed: Images of Motherhood in the Work of Maria Velho da Costa

Ana Luiza de Figueiredo Souza | Maternity in contemporary Brazilian literature written by women

Link to the Zoom Session: https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/83056728293

Seminar IV (05/28/2021):

Francisco Topa | Mother there are only many: oblique glances from Graciliano Ramos and Lygia Fagundes Telles

Tânia Furtado Moreira | Tânia Furtado Moreira Maria! Don’t Kill Me, I’m Your Mother!Camilo Castelo Branco: A Literary Theodicy

Sofia de Melo Araújo | The daughter, the mother-in-law, mothers and aunts – parenting in the feminine in Iris Murdoch

Link to the Zoom Session: https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/89796190404

Organization:

Mafalda Sofia Gomes (CITCEM)

Secretariat:

CITCEM

Design:

Marta Sofia Costa (CITCEM)