Reis Ventura, a imaginação do império e a subjetividade colonial

Anchored in the historiography of the empire, this study is a rereading of the novels of Reis Ventura (1910-1988). Our aim is to reinterpret those novels from five levels of analysis: the ‘Portuguese man’, the political and economic dimension of the Empire, the ‘Portuguese culture’ and its colonial expression. It is by the (inter)relationship of these levels and in its integration that Reis Ventura expressed the metaphysical and utopian project of Portuguese Empire. Published in the newspaper A Província de Angola, the novels of Reis Ventura spread the ideology and the myths of the Portuguese Empire in Africa, contributing to an imagined historical representation of the Empire, to the establishment of a colonial utopia and the collective subjectivity of the Portuguese.