O tema do volfrâmio e o neorrealismo

Abstract

The importance of the extraction of the wolfram during World War II and the corresponding social and political consequences will have, as expected, reflections in the literature of the time and in the immediately subsequent one. The neorealist current took advantage of this phenomenon and the economic and social problems that it raised, and explored it in some paradigmatic works. We are talking about Minério, by Miguel Torga (1941) and Ladrão!, by Marmelo e Silva (1943), as well as the novels Volfrâmio (1943), by Aquilino Ribeiro and Minas de San Francisco (1946), by Fernando Namora. Although we cannot consider them historical novels, the truth is that they portray the living conditions of the characters and the changes that came from the new circumstances. We also highlight a novel (2008), by Miguel Miranda, O Rei do Volfrâmio - A última viagem com todo o requinte. The ironic and caricatured tone of this last work is very different from the political and social commitment of the 1940s' texts. The contrast emphasizes the difference between the treatment influenced by the neorealist aesthetics and the sarcastic and alternative use of history in some of the contemporary novels.