Saramago and the traditions of the European novel

In our study we examine the possibilities of a “non-ideal” reader of the Saramago’s novels who can have difficulties in interpreting these fictions because of their peculiar historical and cultural factual information. Taking as our starting point the statement that “even the literary experience that gets to know a previously unknown work has some kind of ‘previous knowledge which is one moment of the experimentation itself and which finally makes it possible to comprehend—or to read in some empirical context—the new factual material’” we examine the elements of Saramago’s novels which make possible for this reader—even during the first, “perceiving” lecture—to place the novels of Saramago adequately within the tradition of the European novel, helping in this way their appropriate aesthetical reception