Garrett e a tragédia de tema clássico - o exemplo de Mérope

Abstract

Almeida Garrett finished Ms tragedy Merope in 1820, the year of the liberal revolution in Portugal. And because of those events, he never presented it to the public. In this dramatic text, the first he indeed finished, Garrett begins his path to the tragic theatre. He takes an euripidean theme, from the lost play Kresphontes, and builds it with aeschylian, sophoclian and, specialy, euripidean motives. It is true that the portuguese poet had not the Greeks but the works of Voltaire, Alfieri and Maffei as models; but even so, he thought the theme was convenient to his ideas and wrote the play in order to present his politic message of a classical mind begining the way to liberalism/romantic movement. So, Merope's essential idea is the apology for freedom and the refuse of despostism mixed with an eternal mother's love story. With these arguments, Garrett made a tragedy, in which we find some elements that define a classical structure, with a happy ending, like his optimistic youth did prefer.