Intermedial ecocriticism in Blindness by Saramago

Abstract

This article analyzes pictorial representations of the natural world in Blindness (1995), by José Saramago. It covers the moment when an anonymous character describes some paintings he saw in a museum just before he went blind. Some of them are pastorals, suggestive of the lives of the characters before they became blind; but there are also descriptions of paintings that mirror the desperate situation analogous to the situation of the blind people in the asylum. As far as intermedial ecocriticism is concerned, I rely mainly on Jørgen Bruhn’s article “Towards an Intermedial Ecocriticism,” and when referring to culture, nature, and animals, I count on Raymond Williams’ and Greg Garrard’s concepts. Claus Clüver and Liliane Louvel become the main voices when analyzing the intermedial references to painting in the literary text.