The Clear Medieval Laughter
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Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers with Portuguese reading ability who wish to expand their reading of Iberian literature
- Literary researchers interested in the representation of medieval themes in modern literature
- Learners who need public-domain e-books as foreign-language extensive reading material
- Publishing culture researchers concerned with Project Gutenberg and the dissemination of digital public-domain books
Not a good fit for
- Ordinary readers with no Portuguese at all who hope to read a Chinese translation
- Readers expecting a tightly plotted, modern-novel-style reading experience
- Beginning readers who need a systematic literary introduction or detailed annotations
Reading tips
- First learn about the author Lima’s life and times and the Portuguese literary background, then enter the text, to reduce unfamiliarity.
- Read through with reference to the Portuguese original and machine translation, focusing on the narrative tone rather than seeking word-by-word solutions.
- Take notes linking the medieval imagery in the book to the historical imagination in contemporary Portuguese literature.
- If used for a class or reading group, select passages for close reading and discuss the relationship between “laughter” and medieval themes.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
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What does “medieval” in the title refer to?
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About the author
João de Lebre e Lima (1889–1959) was a Portuguese writer whose biographical information is rather limited in publicly available sources; the years of his birth and death, 1889 and 1959, are currently the details that can be confirmed. One work by him is held in the collection, O Claro Riso Medieval. Judging from the title, which evokes medieval themes together with an image of bright laughter, the work may involve a retelling of medieval literature, stories, or cultural life, with a tone that tends toward the light and clear. Because more extensive biographical and bibliographical information is lacking, it is difficult to assess his full body of work or his literary standing systematically. He may nonetheless be regarded as a noteworthy writer within Portuguese literature, and his work offers a concrete example for readers of how an early twentieth-century Portuguese author received and reworked medieval traditions.
