Ecos clássicos na recriação literária da identidade: o projecto Fradique Mendes

Accordingly to the framework of modern literary research and within Queirosian fiction Fradique Mendes holds a very peculiar status, tangentially approaching the complex phenomenon of heteronomy. Passing through different phases alonghis literary gestation, the figure will eventually rise to the amazement of the readersas a confusing exercise of literary re-creation of identity, where doctrinal purposesand unconscious motivations ambiguously intersect. This transfiguring reworking ofan artistic ideally planned otherness seems very revealing, as the haunting presenceof echoes of Greek and Latin classical culture, both as mere allusions to mythical-literary entities, and as more structured historical references, or even personalities of culture and of the arts. Taking as criteria the many classical references explained in ACorrespondência de Fradique Mendes,both in memorial accounts of the biographer andepistolary exercises of Carlos Fradique Mendes as a fictional character, we propose toclarify the relative importance of some models from Classic Antiquity in forming anexemplary model of personality.