Events Calendar
A talk by Sandra Boto
Sandra Boto will talk about her favourite Portuguese writer João Baptista da Silve Leitão de Almeida Garrett. This will be Sandra´s third talk to AHA members and she is a very popular speaker.
Sandra Boto was a Professora Auxiliar at the University of the Algarve where she graduated in Modern Languages and Literature -- Portuguese Studies. She also holds a post-doctoral grant for a research project on the Portuguese Romantic writer Almeida Garrett. One of her main fields of work is Portuguese folk poetry, along with Portuguese and Spanish Literature in a comparative perspective. Sandra worked for the last year at Barcelona University coordinating the Portuguese Language Centre. She has now returned to the Algarve to complete her postdoctoral research. João Baptista da Silva Leitão de Almeida Garrett (1799 – 1854) was a Portuguese playwright, novelist and politician, and he is remembered in Portugal as the country´s first great Romantic writer. His father was a member of the royal household and Knight of the Order of Christ, and the Garrett in their surname was from an Irish forbear. He was forced into exile in 1823 after the Miguelist coup, and in England was much influenced by the works of Shakespeare and Walter Scott. Returning to Portugal with the Liberal forces in 1832, he became a hero of the re-established Liberal government, and wrote historical plays and novels, beginning with O Arco de Santana which was followed by Frei Luís da Silva and Viagens na Minha Terra. In 1852, he was ennobled by D Maria II as the first Viscount Almeida Garrett, and he was for a brief period Minister of Foreign Affairs. Almeida Garrett had an irregular family life, having married in 1823 the 13 y-o Luísa, whom he divorced in 1835. He was then partner to the 17 y-o Adelaide, and after her early death, he became the lover of the married Rosa, who inspired his finest poetry in Folhas Caiadas. Almeida Garrett died of cancer in 1854, and in 1903 his remains were transferred to the Jerónimos Monastery at Belém.
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