Ágapes serranos: a hospitalidade e a convivialidade como recurso narrativo em Andam faunos pelos bosques de Aquilino Ribeiro

Andam faunos pelos bosques starts its original journey highlighting how culinary comforts predispose the senses to the joy of simple things, like the fragrant beauty of a spring afternoon. Throughout the novel, the meals follow one another in episodes explored by the narrator to convey a plurality of meanings, without forgetting the presentation of Beira Alta’s cuisine. For the hosts, such events are opportunities to demonstrate, with greater or lesser desire to assert themselves, a generosity that is seen as an identifying trait of the tolerant and hospitable “old Portugal”. These moments also reveal the guests’ character and ability to share and enjoy common humanity. Some collective meals – called “agapes”, with all the inherent pagan and Christian symbology –, such as the multitudinous picnic that concludes the failed hunt of the “Papa-moças”, manage to bring together an entire community through food and drink, storytelling, music and dance. These are moments that bring each and every person closer to their humanity and thus to their natural essence; and even seemingly excluded figures can stand out, like the village madman Baltasar and the groups of anarchists and vagabonds. Thus, the value of hospitality as an essential principle of justice in community life, transmitted, through practice, from generation to generation, appears to be a fundamental theme in this novel. This paper aims to analyse the way Aquilino frames such episodes in his peculiar way of seeing the world; and expresses them through his very rich array of stylistic and cultural resources, in which the constant Homeric references stand out, suggesting the evocation of the meal as δαίς ἕϊση – a moment when everyone is equal.