Forging a Republic of Letters: Shakespeare, Politics and a New University in Early Twentieth-Century Portugal

Summary

This article addresses the place held by Shakespeare in a short-lived but influential educational endeavour 100 years ago. In 1919, a new school of humanities – or, literally, ‘faculty of letters’ – was set up in the recently founded University of Porto (1911– ), aiming to respond to the formative aspirations of the republican regime created in 1910 through the revolution that had put an end to Portugal’s constitutional monarchy. Education was ideologically central to the Republic’s secularizing project of creating a free and self-aware citizenry, and these ideals were explicitly invoked in pleas for the reshaping of Portuguese higher education voiced in Parliament, the press and other public fora.