Paper short abstract:

Presentation aims to analyze the influence of the environment in the creativity of Portuguese writer Ferreira de Castro, by drawing an interpretation on how the "Pórticos" to his novels show Portuguese and Brazilian landscapes, and in what extent they reflect Human Ecology concepts and principles.

Paper long abstract:

As a strongly humanized territory, Portugal has its natural patrimony strictly connected to human activity. Essential expressions of this interdependence were captured and pictured by the high sensitivity of Ferreira de Castro, one of the 20th century's most important and fertile Portuguese writers, author of masterpiece Jungle.

FCSH investigation project The Literary Face of Human Ecology - Relationship Human-being - Environment in Ferreira de Castro's work intends to examine this writers' work as a vehicle of environmental diffusion and as a source of human ecology consciousness, proposing a multidisciplinary approach between environmental sciences, social sciences and literary analysis. In the context of that main project, this particular presentation starts from the initial concept of Human Ecology as an increasing scientific field relating Ecosphere to Socialsphere; it aims to focus a few "Pórticos" - introductory texts of Ferreira de Castro's novels, some of these regarding Brazilian Amazonia and Portuguese natural and humanized areas.

Non-classical, cross-disciplinary and increasingly widespread new Ecocriticism will be used as the principal methodology for analyzing those literary texts - whose contents reveal an enormous influence of local land rhythms, place spirit and environmental practices, strictly linked to human life, pain and well-being.