Animals in Portuguese

Reissue of the degree thesis in Romance Philology by Delmira Maçãs, benefactor of the Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa, dissertation on animals in the Portuguese language, thesis originally published in 1951. This publication is the result of an in-depth study on the figuration of animals in the lexicon, in this second edition, revised and expanded by the author, through the inclusion of countless notes that Delmira Maçãs collected and added to the original text after its publication. In the introductory text signed by João Nuno P. Corrêa-Cardoso, the professor at the Center for General and Applied Linguistics Studies at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra mentions how the reader is about to start a “true journey into the world of Portuguese culture” , in which he will find “a researcher with the perfect awareness that the linguist will always obtain an unfinished image of his object of reflection” and with a “passion for interdisciplinary dialogue”. João Nuno P. Corrêa-Cardoso praises the scientific qualities of Delmira Maçãs' dissertation, clearly expressed in the “rigor of the adopted methodology, in the permanent concern for the explanation of the observed phenomenon, in the explanation of the sources and in the frank intellectual honesty expressed in a limpid writing”. In the preface to the first edition, Delmira Maçãs reveals the main objective of her dissertation: “to gather and organize a lot of dispersed material, according to a plan that shows the extent to which animals contributed to the enrichment of language”. The author ends the study with a revealing final inscription: “I am an animal. A harmless animal, like the thousands I have in this book in print.”

Author: Delmira Maçãs

Year of publication: 2010
ISBN: 9789728761790