Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen (1919–2004) was a major Portuguese poet and short-story writer whose work earned her a place in Portugal’s national Pantheon. The Tale of Fairy Oriana, published in 1958, is a canonical work of children's and young adult literature, recounting the story of a fairy who, enchanted by her own reflection in a river, abandons her duties as guardian of the forest. Drawing on the imaginative structure of the fairy-tale genre, this seminar explores how normative orders are staged and unsettled within the narrative, and how legal norms and sexual grammars emerge through moral allegories of care, vanity, obligation, transgression, and redemption. In this sense, the tale becomes a laboratory for thinking the entanglement of law, imaginary, and moral economy in literary form – not as separate domains, but as mutually constitutive regimes of order and meaning.

Commentary by: Francisco Vaz da Silva (ISCTE-IUL)

^{The seminars will take place on Zoom. Participation is free, but advance registration is required. Upon registration, participants will receive Moodle login instructions and credentials to access all materials for the discussion.}
 

Bio note

Soraya Nour Sckell is a Full Professor at NOVA School of Law (NOVA University Lisbon). Director of CEDIS - Centre for Research & Development on Law and Society (NOVA School of Law) and a researcher at the Centre for Philosophy at the University of Lisbon. Sckell was Principal Investigator for the project “Cosmopolitanism: Justice, Democracy and Citizenship without Borders” (PTDC/FER-FIL/30686/2017, 2018–2022). In 2012, she received the Franco-German Friendship Award (German Embassy in Paris) and, in 2018, the Wolfgang Kaupen-Preis in Sociology of Law (German Sociological Association – Sociology of Law Section). Sckell received her PhD in Philosophy from Paris Nanterre University and Goethe-Universität Frankfurt (2012), under the supervision of Axel Honneth and Christian Lazzeri, and in Law from the University of São Paulo (1999), under the supervision of Vicente Marotta Rangel. She conducted postdoctoral research at the Universities of Saint Louis (SLU), Nanterre, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin (Humboldt University). Has taught at the Universities of São Paulo, Munich, Metz, Lille and Lisbon, as well as at Universidade Portucalense. Sckell was director of the research programme on cosmopolitanism at the Collège International de Philosophie (Paris, 2013–2019). 

Francisco Vaz da Silva is an Associate Professor with habilitation in the Department of Anthropology at Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon. Francisco Vaz da Silva works on symbolic representations, which he mostly addresses in the fields of fairy tales, religious art, and comparative anthropology. His books include Metamorphosis: The Dynamics of Symbolism in European Fairy Tales (2002), Archeology of Intangible Heritage [2008], The Meanings of Enchantment: Revisiting Wondertale Symbolism (2023), and an annotated seven-volume collection of European fairy tales, Contos Maravilhosos Europeus (2011-2013). He has published extensively in professional journals, encyclopedias, and companion volumes in America and Europe. He was a visiting professor at the University of Tartu (2016), the University of Reykjavik (2013), and the University of California at Berkeley (2001/2002) and Los Angeles (2009). He has been the recipient of a Fulbright Research grant (1999) and a Faculty Research Grant from the Portuguese Studies Program at UC Berkeley (2001/2002). He serves in the editorial board of Cosmos (UK), Cultural Analysis (USA), Marvels & Tales (USA), and Narrative Culture (USA).
 

The “Law and Books” series is organised by Ana Oliveira and Tiago Ribeiro, and takes place within the scope of the LAWCUS project – reference 2023.12608.PEX, funded by national funds through the Foundation for Science and Technology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.54499/2023.12608.PEX