Forma breve e fotografia: una narrativa del Mozambico

This thesis focuses on the interdisciplinarity between literature and photography according to a re-reading of the recent history of Mozambique.It starts from an enquiry into the colonial archive and the oral tradition partly merged with the “estoria” through which the popular heritage of the traditional narrative is recovered. The dialogue between verbal and visual expression allows new possible interpretations in the post- colonial debate between memory, trauma and representation. A comparative analysis between Coelho's narrative and Rangel's photography reveals different views of the external world but also convergencies marked by common forms of expression. Photography fills some gaps bringing about a certain vision of the past which is however just a representation of reality and not reality itself. The literary text thanks to its dialogic approach allows a complex re-elaboration of both semantic and cultural data supplying clues for a re-writing of History. The convergence between the visual and the narrative expression marks the boundaries of what can actually be communicated. The dialogue between those forms establishes the peculiarity of the Mozambican literature which according to Luandino Viera's “...in the postcolonial context writers are satellites in orbit round the black holes of history” whose force of attraction allows a new organization of the entire literary heritage.