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- Lessons from the past: the Panic of 1893Publication . Silva, Edgardo Medeiros, 1961-Does financial bankruptcy on a national level imply failure on a personal plane? To what extent does national financial meltdown undermine individual identity and consciousness? Can personal loss of identity and confidence be transposed onto the national level? And what about one’s self-worth, does it become a “valueless currency” as well? I wish to examine in this paper the Panic of 1893 through the eyes of Henry Adams (1838-1918), one of the most insightful observers of the American political scene in the second half of the nineteenth century. Adams’s non-fiction works are particularly illuminating in the context of the postbellum industrialization of the United States and of the development of financial capitalism in the latter part of the nineteenth century. His jeremiadical discourse on the subject of the 1893 financial meltdown of the U.S. economy and on the impact of financial bankruptcy on individuals and nations, provide us with plenty of food for thought these days. The author in question evidences misgivings in his works about the hegemonic impact of capitalism on the lives of both individuals and nations, criticizing the drive for economic supremacy and territorial expansion pursued by the United States at the time. What lessons can we draw from Adams’s personal narrative (and from the past, for that matter) to understand our current financial and political woes is a question which will hold centre stage in this paper.
- Introductory note [Revista anglo saxonica, III:12]Publication . Alves, Isabel Maria Fernandes, 1964- ; Johnson, Rochelle; Silva, Edgardo Medeiros, 1961-Introduction to this volume
- Civil resistance: in accord with nature: on the Bicentennial of H. D. ThoreauPublication . Silva, Edgardo Medeiros da, 1961-; Alves, Isabel Maria Fernandes, 1964- ; Gato, Margarida Vale de, 1973-
- A strange kind of feeling: conflict and alliance in literature on screen: interview with Lídia JorgePublication . Jorge, Lídia, 1946-; Ramos, Suzana Alves; Silva, Edgardo Medeiros, 1961-Interview with Lídia Jorge
- The Powerless Diplomacy of the Abbé Correia da SerraPublication . Silva, Edgardo Medeiros, 1961-This paper examines the diplomatic activity of the Abbé Correia da Serra (1751-1823), the first Portuguese Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States, in connection with the use of American ports by privateers preying on Portugal’s commerce with Brazil, its South American colony. Despite his connections to the political and intellectual circles in the United States capital at the time, and the justness of Portuguese grievances against the American government in this matter, Correia da Serra’s remonstrance went unheeded in Washington, as they collided with the underlying principles of its foreign policy towards Latin America in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The so-called Monroe Doctrine implied that the original American project of revolution could be applied to the whole continent and that it was the “manifest destiny” of the United States to assume the role of guardian of the Americas. American public opinion and its more radical press were not sympathetic to Old World monarchies, and so it was particularly difficult for Correia da Serra to prevent Brazilian revolutionaries from gathering support in the United States for their independence movement and for the American government to enforce the neutrality legislation approved by Congress to punish the activity of privateers.
- Redeeming the old south in David O. Selznick’s Gone with the WindPublication . Silva, Edgardo Medeiros, 1961-David O. Selznick’s filmic adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936) is informed by the same kind of Romantic nostalgia we find in the pages of this timeless award-winning novel, offering its viewers a conflicting vision over the nature and significance of the period of time which followed the end of the American Civil War. Northerners understood that period as one of “Reconstruction”, whereas Southerners envisaged it more as a time of “Restoration”. I wish to examine in this paper how producer David O. Selznick attempts to redeem the South in his filmic adaptation of this text, in line with the essential premise(s) of Mitchell’s novel, through his representation of a pre-Civil War idyllic, romanticized South, devoid of the pernicious effects of the “peculiar institution”, subjected in a first instance to the aggression of a great Northern invader and upon its defeat by a civilian army of Carpetbaggers.