Portugal: a land of mills
Full details
| Authors & editors | Miranda, Jorge Augusto [Author] |
| Publisher | Chronos Editora |
| Year of publication | 2008 |
| Languages | English (main text) |
| Medium | Book |
| Edition | 1 |
| ISBN | 9789899540927 |
| Topics | Wind & watermills > Other Europe (not GB) > Mediterranean countries & Portugal |
| Tags | |
| Scope & content | A guide to all known mills across Portugal. Each mill is presented by way of an introduction to its geographic and historical context, by choosing a given period of time to submerge in the muddy waters of its history and have a look at the people, the region, and the country from the window of the mill. The main characters are the millers and builders of the mills. Real people who relive real stories, some personally told to the author, others discovered from the author's research. In any case, understanding the traditional technology of the mills and recreating the everyday working gestures is done, wherever possible, in the first person, by transforming the miller into a character and by weaving a web of technical facts and real events where fiction participates within very strict limits, and is confined to the order of these facts or the subjective opinions which are issued to recount the view of the people during the time of the events which marked their lives and built Portugal. Throughout the book the different tasks described of the work of the millers exemplify, as a whole, almost the whole craft albeit with a number of anachronisms and regionalisms.The texts do not only help us discover this craft, they also encourage an articulation between the mills as places of production and other productions which at certain historical moments took place in their actual mill or close by, the millers eventually incorporating them in their everyday work (gold veins, tungsten, fishing, grain commerce, lanterns...) depending on the needs of each time and business opportunities, always taken advantage of by millers. A glossary of English-Portuguese mill terms is provided at the end of each chapter. |
Copies held
Accession no. 229712
- Shelf location: C113.1-MIR
- Donor: Michael Dufau
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