O Terramoto de Lisboa de 1755 no Imaginário Gótico Britânico: uma leitura de The Nun of Miserecordia (1807), de de Sophia Frances

Abstract

Published in 1807, when the Gothic novel was enjoying great popularity, The Nun of Miserecordia; or, The Eve of All Saints, by Sophia Frances (most likely a pseudonym), is a very good example of how the genre had, by then, crystallised around formulas that were so recurrent and conventional that they became the target of criticism and parody. Women contributed greatly to this success, both as consumers and authors of a type of fiction that explored mystery, terror and horror through action-packed narratives, often marked by prolonged scenes of suspense and many kinds of calamities. This is precisely the case with The Nun of Miserecordia; or, The Eve of All Saints, a 1,050- page novel whose action starts in eighteenth-century Lisbon and is driven by a Portuguese nun’s desire for revenge. This choice of setting and the fact that the author introduced the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake into her work, exploring the Gothic potential of such a great catastrophe, make the novel interesting for Anglo-Portuguese Studies and the mapping of references to Portugal in British literature. This paper analyses the representation of the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake in Sophia Frances’s novel and the parallels that can be drawn, in metaphorical terms, between the destruction caused by that natural disaster and the vengeful plans of the Nun of Misericórdia. By choosing the setting of the Portuguese capital reduced to ruins, with all its melodramatic overtones and sensationalist horror, as the backdrop for the revolt of a woman who, like others in Gothic fiction, reacts with a destructive spirit of revenge to the abuse she feels she has suffered, the author shows that the terrible 1755 Lisbon Earthquake, fifty years later, was still echoing in the British imagination and persisting in historical memory.