Download or read book A Canon of Empty Fathers written by Phillip Rothwell and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Canon of Empty Fathers: Paternity in Portuguese Narrative is the first book-length study that analyzes the repeated and peculiar deployment of the father figure in Portuguese narratives from the nineteenth century to the present day. In it, Phillip Rothwell argues for a specifically Portuguese tendency toward what he terms empty paternity - a corruption of the Lacanian paternal function that has surfaced continuously in Portuguese culture from the fifteenth century onward.