ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes how American writer John Dos Passos deals with Portuguese History in his book The Portugal Story – Three Centuries of Explorations and Discovery. Our reading ponders on Dos Passos’ distinction between History and Story and shows how he manages to enhance a dialogue with tradition. At the same time, he innovates in a text that is anchored on the margins of conventional discourses: History and Literature.
In addition, we unveil the function of iconography, here conceived as a subtext that, while unfolding along with the main textual narrative, builds its own reasoning about a fragment of time: the Portuguese Expansion.
