''The Baron'' (Portuguese: ''O Barão'') is a 1942

postmodern Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...

novella by

Branquinho da Fonseca António José Branquinho da Fonseca (4 May 1905 – 7 May 1974) was a Portuguese writer. Some of his early works were published under the pseudonym António Madeira. He is best remembered as the first editor of ''Presença'', "one of the most impo ...

originally published under his

pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

António Madeira. The plot revolves around a visiting school inspector who encounters an eccentric and moody baron living in a medieval manor house.

Plot Summary

The narrator, a

Lisbon Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...

-based elementary school inspector who dislikes his job, arrives in a village in Serra do Barroso and meets a female teacher, who promptly sends a message up the mountain to the Baron. Soon, the Baron comes and invites him to his manor with the declaration "I give the orders around here!" On the way, the Baron talks about his life at the

University of Coimbra The University of Coimbra (UC; pt, Universidade de Coimbra, ) is a Public university, public research university in Coimbra, Portugal. First established in Lisbon in 1290, it went through a number of relocations until moving permanently to Coi ...

and continues to talk after their arrival in his huge but seemingly empty house. Nothing but wine is offered even as his guest starves. Finally, he has a maid named Idalina prepare food while he babbles on about his past: how he swapped women with his father for his money, how he defiled a girl named Emília and drove her to suicide, and how he kidnapped Idalina from her village over twenty years ago. After dinner, a group of hooded musicians arrive and perform two pieces, which are concluded by a

baptism Baptism (from grc-x-koine, βάπτισμα, váptisma) is a form of ritual purification—a characteristic of many religions throughout time and geography. In Christianity, it is a Christian sacrament of initiation and adoption, almost inv ...

-like ceremony, with the group sharing bread and wine and the Baron showering in wine. The Baron then announces he will go to Sleeping Beauty's Castle. He takes the inspector with him but abandons him midway. The inspector, also very drunk, sees Idalina and tactlessly tries to seduce her. He retires to his bedroom but his cigarette causes the bed to catch fire as he sleeps. He is rescued by Idalina and the Baron. The two men resume their drinking–discussion, with the inspector confessing an unhappy affair for the first time in his life. They go to the garden, and the Baron picks a rose for his beloved. They continue their wandering. When the Baron senses his servants following, he fires several bullets in their direction. All the while he talks incoherently about how he and his star-crossed separated. Finally they arrive at a wall, and the Baron leaves the inspector with his dogs. The inspector walks aimlessly for a long time until he can walk no more. At daybreak he borrows a donkey from a miller and returns to the manor, where the Baron has returned with a bullet in his shoulder and a fractured skull — but he is already out of danger. Apparently the Baron had climbed up Sleeping Beauty's Castle and placed his rose at her window in the darkness of the night. The story concludes with the narrator announcing his desire to revisit the Baron.

Translations

There are at least two English versions: *Francisco Cota Fagundes' translation: *John Byrne's translation:

Themes

José Régio José Maria dos Reis Pereira, better known by the pen name José Régio (17 September 1901, Vila do Conde – 22 December 1969, Vila do Conde), was a Portuguese writer who spent most of his life in Portalegre (1929 to 1962). He was the brother ...

argues that the realistic and the fantastic are inseparable in the story.

David Mourão-Ferreira David de Jesus Mourão-Ferreira, GCSE (February 24, 1927 in Lisbon – June 16, 1996 in Lisbon) was a Portuguese writer and poet from Lisbon. He was a son of David Ferreira (b. 1898) and wife Teresa de Jesus Ferro Mourão (b. 1907). He studied ...

notes that the first part was more realistic and the transition to the mythic brings out the plot's multidimensionality, which parallels that of the titular character. Ricardo da Silveira Lobo Sternberg, who considers the narrator the central character, describes the two main characters as "polar opposites" in the beginning and "in reality one and the same" by the end. Maria Aparecida Santilli has pointed out the Baron's dual-personality: one capable of platonic love and one that impulsively exploits women. Nelly Novaes Coelho sees the inspector as a representative of extreme

Rationalism In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy' ...

and the Baron as creativity and the enterprising spirit. Edward A. Riggio sees the Baron as an embodiment of medieval Portugal. Yvone David-Peyre also notes the abundant motifs from

medieval romance As a literary genre, the chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that was popular in the noble courts of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a chivalric k ...

like the rose, Sleeping Beauty, and the castle. Leland Guyer interprets the work as an

intertext Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text, either through deliberate Composition (language), compositional strategies such as quotation, allusion, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche or parody,Gerard Genette (1997) ' ...

of the medieval Spanish poem ''

Dark Night of the Soul ''Dark Night of the Soul'' ( es, La noche oscura del alma) is a poem written by the 16th-century Spanish mystic and poet St. John of the Cross. The author himself did not give any title to his poem, on which he wrote two book-length commentari ...

'' by

San Juan de la Cruz John of the Cross, OCD ( es, link=no, Juan de la Cruz; la, Ioannes a Cruce; born Juan de Yepes y Álvarez; 24 June 1542 – 14 December 1591) was a Spanish Catholic priest, mystic, and a Carmelite friar of converso origin. He is a major fig ...

Adaptations

In 1968, Luís de Sttau Monteiro adapted the novella into a play. The 2011

film adaptation A film adaptation is the transfer of a work or story, in whole or in part, to a feature film. Although often considered a type of derivative work, film adaptation has been conceptualized recently by academic scholars such as Robert Stam as a dial ...

was directed by

Edgar Pêra Edgar Henrique Clemente Pêra (born 19 November 1960) is a Portuguese filmmaker. Pêra is also a fine artist and a graphic comics artist . and writes fiction and cinema essays (PhD). Edgar Pêra studied Psychology, but switched to Film at the ...

and stars Nuno Melo as the Baron.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Baron, The 1942 novels 20th-century Portuguese novels Novels set in Portugal Portuguese novels adapted into films Portuguese novels adapted into plays Postmodern novels