Memorial do convento inscribes the literary path in the important reflexive tradition about work devaluation, a problem posed in a long-term historical panorama in Brazil and Portugal. In this novel by José Saramago, in parallel to the story of the Mafra Convent construction, another storyis narrated, that of the passarola's construction. If the Convent edification bears the mark of work as torture, the passarola affirms the creative ability for those who build it, based on a true complementarity of efforts. However, there is not in the Memorial a simplistic opposition between a positive and a negative dimension of work, because among the major intents of the narrator - regarding both the efforts to raise the passarola and the description of the construction of the Convent - is to diminish the strict distinction between manual work and the intellective dimension of certain tasks.
José Saramago; work; Mafra Convent; passarola