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The Gospel According To José Saramago: A Comparative Study Of Critical Reception In Portugal, United States, And Canada, Bruna Reis

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Portuguese writer José Saramago (1922-2010) is well-known for controversial, challenging, and thought-provoking novels. In this study, I analyze the critical reception of his works in his home country, where The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991) was excluded from participation in the European Literary Prize on ideological grounds, and in the United States and Canada, where Blindness (1995) brought a wave of uniformly positive response until the publication of Cain (2010), perceived negatively as a didactic tool to convince readers of the unviability of Christianity.

This examination is framed by Iser’s theory of aesthetic response. More specifically, I focus on …