Catastrophe, Resilience, and the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake

Resumo

The Lisbon earthquake, in 1755, was a catastrophe with a global scope, and gave rise to a huge number of reactions, be they artistic, literary, discursive, or visual. In all of these we may find some common characteristics: the sublime dimension of the event, the melodramatic expression that follows suit, the permeability of the catastrophe representation through all the genres considered, from the sermon to poetry, from narrative and the epistolary form to the historical imagination or philosophical considerations. The central need to discursively represent the event entails the presence of the testimony of the survivor: the one who sees, who survives, and is able to retell what happened.