The Monge de Cister (Monk of Cister) by Alexandre Herculano: The History in the Novel

Abstract

Alexandre Herculano, a romantic intellectual, sharing the values and ideals of liberalism, supported a project of national education in which history, literature and morality contributed to the formation of generations in love with the Nation and the commitment towards its regeneration. The deepening knowledge of history crossed all of the romantic intellectual genres, including poetry, the novel, the novela and the theatre. Soon Herculano used his knowledge and multiplied his activities, devoting himself to writing the science of history, to the preservation of historical documents and to the dissemination and accessibility of history through periodicals, fictional romantic literature and historical dramas. The romantic histories of Alexandre Herculano, O Bobo, Eurico o Presbítero e O Monge de Cister, and the majority of his fictional literature, from his early Lendas e Narrativas, center on the Middle Ages, the preferred epoch of the romantics, and it is this period to which the author devoted himself as historian, novelist and diplomatist. In this study we will analyze the book O Monge de Cister (The Monk of Cister), essentially from the historical perspective. We will use the narrative to focus on the political figures that are represented in it and the historical period of the fictionalized situations. We will focus on the social and cultural environment that is portrayed to us by Herculano. And we will seek to grasp through the prose of the story the ideals that, through lessons of the past, Herculano advocated and wanted to pass on to his readers.