In Search of “what’s in a name”: The English Pessoa as Poet as SHAKESPEARE, and the Case of SuperCamões
În căutarea a „ce-i într-un nume”: englezul Pessoa ca poetul ca SHAKESPEARE şi cazul SuperCamões

Summary/Abstract: This paper deals with the question of naming and being against the background of the Western tradition (Plato’s Cratylus being the point of reference). At the interface of English and Portuguese literature(s) / culture(s), it halts to consider the case of Fernando Pessoa, whose early work is written in English, only to bring up the issue of European identity. This is approached from the onomastic perspective, with Pessoa’s heteronyms as obvious concepts and poetic material. The theoretician Pessoa is further analysed in parallel with T. S. Eliot and modernist poetry presented with its basic coordinates. For the English case, the debate gravitates round the canonical of canonicals – Shakespeare turned SHAKESPEARE, for the Portuguese, it is Camões turned SuperCamões, reenactments of Eliot’s Dante. From pseudonyms to heteronyms and back to orthonyms, capitalizing on endonyms and exonyms, identity and names, being and naming provide as many critical landmarks for the whole demonstration.

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