Imaginary Geographies in Portuguese and Lusophone-African Literature: Narratives of Discovery and Empire

This study interrogates a series of utopian projections that have informed Portuguese and Luso-African letters and culture since the Renaissance. Concentrating on three crucial historical moments ��Portugal�� tenuous hegemony in the Asian seas in the 16th century, the collapse of its colonial empire in the mid-1970s, and finally, the post-independence period of re-evaluating nationalisms in Africa ��the study examines the familiar ��ong narrative��which casts the Portuguese Discoveries as an inaugural and enabling event in Europe�� conquest of the world.