Os Dores, de Henrique de Senna Fernandes, uma narrativa insular entre o ostracismo e a integração. [Os Dores, di Henrique de Senna Fernandes, un racconto insulare tra ostracismo e integrazione.]

Henrique de Senna Fernandes is, without a doubt, an important writer in the field of Portuguese-language literature and has been considered by many critics as the guardian of Macau's memories, which implies understanding his work in the network of demarcations and preservation of Macanese identity. This work intends to reflect on the relationship between space and the construction of characters, in the work Os Dores (2012), with special emphasis on the intersection involving the protagonist, Leontina das Dores, and the island of Coloane, in a perspective that encompasses both literature and human geography and ethnography. We start from the hypothesis that Leontina das Dores, in her representation, aggregates marginal factors in the construction of the Macanese identity in a material and symbolic symbiosis of the relations between the island of Coloane and Macau. In addition to a brief introduction, the text is developed in four stages that seek to: establish historical and geographical notions of the island of Coloane in the process of forming the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR); highlight the concerns of Henrique de Senna Fernandes with the Macanese identity and the importance that places occupy in his narrative construction; to analyze significant passages in Os Dores that intersect the characterization of the protagonist, in her ostracism and integration process, and symbolic aspects of the island of Coloane linked to Macau; finally, a conclusion that takes up the previous points and discusses how the island is an important issue for thinking about the Macao SAR and its literature. Among the different theories that support the reflection, notions of spatial experience, by Yi-Fu Tuan, will be used; the dynamics of Macanese ethnicity, according to João Pina Cabral, Nelson Lourenço and Ana Maria Amaro, and literary criticism from Macau, according to José Carlos Seabra Pereira and David Brookshaw.