Abstract
This seminar intends to mark the centenary of the cultural journal Orpheu, cradle of the First Portuguese Modernism, and reflect on it as a point of convergence of personalities and contemporary movements, whether at national or transnational level. The cosmopolitanism of Orpheus’ generation is reflected in the transatlantic contacts that led to the emergence of the first issue of a journal, initially presented as Luso-Brazilian, and the avant-garde of the second issue, while the time of reception and dialogue with contemporary movements in Europe, from international, such as futurism and cubism, local, such as the vorticism associated to the journal Blast (1914-1915). Special focus will be given to the contact points between Orpheu and Blast, little studied so far, proposing that both magazines are contemporary expressions of a marginal cosmopolitanism (Siskind) aimed at cultural emancipation of European hegemonic currents for the affirmation of indigenous aesthetic that claimed to be localist and cosmopolitan, nationalist and universal.

In addition to the presentation, the seminar will also include a presentation by Steffen Dix  - 1915 - The Year of Orpheu (2015), volume he edited under the  project ‘ 1915 - the year of Orpheu: Mapping the sociohistorical context of Portugal's First Modernism’ (2014-2015) in which Patricia McNeill worked, and followed by the book release.

Bio note

Patrícia Silva McNeill, holds a PhD in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at King's College London, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for social Studies, University of Coimbra and the Department of Iberian and Latin American Studies, Queen Mary, University of London. Her research project, funded by FCT, is entitled 'Transcultural Modernism: Transatlantic Networks and Translocal Exchanges between Luso-Brazilian and Anglo-American Sites of Modernity'. Previously, she lectured Introduction to Language and Literature of Portugal, Brazil and Lusophone Africa at Cambridge University and was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies at the School of Advanced Studies, University of London. She is the author of Yeats and Pessoa: Parallel Poetic Styles (2010). Recent publications include chapters on Orpheu and Blast in 1915 - The Year of Orpheu (2015) and on Brasilia as modernist utopia and its literary and cinematic representation Alternative Worlds: Blue-Sky Thinking Since 1900 (2015), and an article on the esotericism in Fernando Pessoa, W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound regarding the avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century in Pessoa Plural 6 (Oct., 2014).

Steffen Dix
 

Activity within the Humanities, Migration and Peace Studies Research Group (NHUMEP)