Portuguese literature
Encyclopedia
This is a survey of Portuguese literature.
The Portuguese language
was developed gradually from the Vulgar language (i.e. Vulgar Latin
) spoken in the countries which formed part of the Roman Empire
and, both in morphology and syntax, it represents an organic transformation of Latin without the direct intervention of any foreign tongue. The sounds, grammatical forms, and syntactical types, with a few exceptions, are derived from Latin, but the vocabulary has absorbed a number of Germanic
and Arabic
words, and a few have Celtic
origin. Before the close of the Middle Ages the language threatened to become almost as abbreviated as French
, but learned writers, in their passion for antiquity, re-approximated the vocabulary to Latin. The Renaissance commenced a separation between literary men and the people, between the written and spoken tongue, which with some exceptions lasted until the beginning of the 19th century. Then the Romanticists went back to tradition and drew on the poetry and every day speech of the people, and, thanks to the writings of such men as Almeida Garrett
and Camilo Castelo Branco
, the literary language became national once again.
) that an indigenous popular poetry existed before the beginning of the written record, although the first datable poems (a handful between around 1200 and 1225) show influences from Provence
. These poems were composed in a language called Galician-Portuguese
(or Galego-Portuguese), the common ancestor of modern Galician and Portuguese. The first known venues of poetic activity were aristocratic courts in Galicia and the North of Portugal (we know this thanks to the recent work of the Portuguese historian Antonio Resende de Oliveira). After that the center shifted to the court of Alfonso X (The Wise King), King of Castile and Leon (etc.). Some of the same poets (and others) practiced their craft in the court of King Alfonso III, who had been educated in France. The main manuscript sources for Galician-Portuguese verse are the Cancioneiro da Ajuda probably a late 13th century manuscript, the Cancioneiro da Vaticana
and the Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional
(also called Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti). Both these latter codices were copied in Rome at the behest of the Italian humanist Angelo Colocci
, probably around 1525.
There was a late flowering during the reign of King Dinis I (1261–1325), a very learned man, whose output is the largest preserved (137 texts). The main genres practiced were the male-voiced cantiga d'amor, the female-voiced cantiga d'amigo (though all the poets were male) and the poetry of insult, called cantigas d'escarnio e maldizer (songs of scorn and insult). This 13th century Court poetry, which deals mainly with love and personal insult (often wrongly called satire), by no means derives entirely from Provençal models and conventions (as is often said). Most scholars and critics favor the cantigas d'amigo, which probably were "rooted in local folksong" (Henry Roseman Lang, 1894), and in any event are the largest surviving body of female-voiced love lyric that has survived from ancient or medieval Europe. The total corpus of medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric, excluding the Cantigas de Santa Maria
, consists of around 1685 texts. In addition to the large manuscripts named above, we also have a few songs with music in the Vindel Parchment, which contains melodies for six cantigas d'amigo of Martin Codax
, and the Pergaminho Sharrer
, a fragment of a folio with seven cantigas d'amor of King Dinis. In both these manuscripts the poems are the same we find in the larger codices and moreover in the same order.
By the middle of the 15th century troubadour verse was effectively dead, replaced by a limper form of court poetry, represented in the Cancioneiro Geral compiled in the 16th century by poet and humanist Garcia de Resende
. Meanwhile the people were elaborating a ballad poetry of their own, the body of which is known as the Romanceiro. It consists of lyrico-narrative poems treating of war, chivalry, adventure, religious legends, and the sea, many of which have great beauty and contain traces of the varied civilizations which have existed in the peninsula. When the Court poets had exhausted the artifices of Provençal lyricism, they imitated the poetry of the people, giving it a certain vogue which lasted until the Classical Renaissance
. It was then thrust into the background, and though cultivated by a few, it remained unknown to men of letters until the nineteenth century, when Almeida-Garrett began his literary revival and collected folk poems from the mouths of the peasantry.
has survived to this day, but there are medieval poems of romantic adventure given prose form; for example, the Demanda do Santo Graal (Quest for the Holy Grail) and "Amadis of Gaul". The first three books of the latter probably received their present shape from João Lobeira
, a troubadour of the end of the 13th century, though this original has been lost and only a 16th century Spanish
version remains. The Book of Aesop also belongs to this period. Though the cultivated taste of the Renaissance
affected to despise the medieval stories, it adopted them with alterations as a homage to classical antiquity. Hence came the cycle of the "Palmerins" and the Chronica do Emperador Clarimundo of João de Barros
. The medieval romance of chivalry gave place to the pastoral
novel, the first example of which is the Saudades of Bernardim Ribeiro
, followed by the Diana of Jorge de Montemayor
, a Portuguese writer who wrote in Spanish. Later in the sixteenth century Gonçalo Fernandes Trancoso, a fascinating storyteller, produced his Historias de Proveito e Exemplo.
wrote a book of the chase, his sons, King Duarte and D. Pedro, composed moral treatises, and an anonymous scribe told with charming naïveté the story of the heroic Nuno Alvares Pereira
in the Chronica do Condestavel. The line of the chroniclers which is one of the boasts of Portuguese literature began with Fernão Lopes
, who compiled the chronicles of the reigns of Kings Pedro I
, Fernando, and John I
. He combined a passion for accurate statement with a special talent for descriptive writing and portraiture, and with him a new epoch dawns. Azurara, who succeeded him in the post of official chronicler, and wrote the Chronicle of Guinea and chronicles of the African wars, is an equally reliable historian, whose style is marred by pedantry and moralizing. His successor, Ruy de Pina, avoids these defects and, though not an artist like Lopes, gives a useful record of the reigns of Kings Duarte, Alfonso V
, and John II
. His history of the latter monarch was appropriated by the poet Garcia de Resende
, who adorned it, adding many anecdotes he had learned during his intimacy with John, and issued it under his own name.
, especially that of Petrarch
, into the peninsula led to a revival of Spanish verse, which dominated Portugal throughout the fifteenth century. Constable Dom Pedro
, friend of the Marquis of Santillana
, wrote almost entirely in Castilian
and is the first representative of the Spanish influence which imported from Italy the love of allegory and reverence for classical antiquity. The court poetry of some three hundred knights and gentlemen of the time of Alfonso V and John II is contained in the "Cancioneiro Geral", compiled by Resende and inspired by Juan de Mena
, Jorge Manrique
, and other Spaniards. The subjects of these mostly artificial verses are love and satire. Among the few that reveal special talent and genuine poetical feeling are Resende's lines on the death of D. Ignez de Castro
, the "Fingimento de Amores" of Diogo Brandão, and the "Coplas" of D. Pedro. Three names appear in the "Cancioneiro" which were destined to create a literary revolution, those of Bernardim Ribeiro
, Gil Vicente
, and Sá de Miranda.
. These and the eclogues and sententious "Cartas" of Sá de Miranda are written in versos de arte mayor, and the popular medida velha (as the national metre was afterwards called to distinguish it from the Italian endecasyllable), continued to be used by Camoens in his so-called minor works, by Bandarra
for his prophecies, and by Gil Vicente.
did not originate dramatic representations, he is the father of the Portuguese stage. Of his forty-four pieces, fourteen are in Portuguese, eleven in Castilian, the remainder bilingual, and they consist of autos, or devotional works, tragicomedies, and farces. Beginning in 1502 with religious pieces, conspicuous among them being "Auto da Alma" and the famous trilogy of the "Barcas", he soon introduces the comic and satirical element by way of relief and for moral ends, and, before the close of his career in 1536, has arrived at pure comedy, as in "Ignez Pereira" and the "Floresta de Enganos", and developed the study of character. The plots are simple, the dialogue spirited, the lyrics often of finished beauty, and while Gil Vicente appeared too early to be a great dramatist, his plays mirror to perfection the types, customs, language, and daily life of all classes. The playwrights who followed him had neither superior talents nor court patronage and, attacked by the classical school for their lack of culture and by the Inquisition for their grossness, they were reduced to entertaining the lower class at country fairs and festivals.
, a superior stylist, by Diogo Bernardes, and Andrade Caminha, but the Quinhentistas tended to lose spontaneity in their imitation of classical models, though the verse of Frei Agostinho da Cruz is an exception. The genius of Luís de Camões
, called "Camoens" in English, led him to fuse the best elements of the Italian and popular muse, thus creating a new poetry. Imitators arose in the following centuries, but most of their epics are little more than chronicles in verse. They include three by Jerónimo Corte-Real
, and one each by Pereira Brandão, Francisco de Andrade, Rodriguez Lobo, Pereira de Castro, Sá de Menezes, and Garcia de Mascarenhas.
in his "Decadas", continued by Diogo do Couto, described with mastery the deeds achieved by the Portuguese in the discovery and conquest of the lands and seas of the Orient. Damião de Gois
, humanist and friend of Erasmus, wrote with rare independence on the reign of King Manuel the Fortunate. Bishop Osorio treated of the same subject in Latin, but his interesting "Cartas" are in the vulgar tongue. Among others who dealt with the East are Castanheda, Antonio Galvão, Gaspar Correia
, Bras de Albuquerque, Frei Gaspar da Cruz, and Frei João dos Santos. The chronicles of the kingdom were continued by Francisco de Andrade and Frei Bernardo da Cruz, and Miguel Leitão de Andrade compiled an interesting volume of "Miscellanea". The travel literature of the period is too large for detailed mention: Persia, Syria, Abyssinia, Florida, and Brazil were visited and described and Father Lucena compiled a classic life of St. Francis Xavier, but the "Peregrination" of Mendes Pinto, a typical Conquistador, is worth all the story books put together for its extrãordinary adventures told in a vigorous style, full of colour and life, while the "Historia Tragico-Maritima", a record of notable shipwrecks between 1552 and 1604, has good specimens of simple anonymous narrative. The dialogues of Samuel Usque, a Lisbon Jew, also deserve mention. Religious subjects were usually treated in Latin, but among moralists who used the vernacular were Frei Heitor Pinto, Bishop Arraez, and Frei Thome de Jesus, whose "Trabalhos de Jesus" has appeared in many languages.
Ecclesiastical eloquence was at its best in the seventeenth century and the pulpit filled the place of the press of to-day. The originality and imaginative power of his sermons are said to have won for Father Antonio Vieira in Rome the title of "Prince of Catholic Orators" and though they and his letters exhibit some of the prevailing faults of taste, he is nonetheless great both in ideas and expression. The discourses and devotional treatises of the Oratorian Manuel Bernardes, who was a recluse, have a calm and sweetness that we miss in the writings of a man of action like Vieira and, while equally rich, are purer models of classic Portuguese prose. He is at his best in "Luz e Calor" and the "Nova Floresta". Letter writing is represented by such master hands as D. Francisco Manuel de Mello in familiar epistles, Frei Antonio das Chagas
in spiritual, and by five short but eloquent documents of human affection, the "Cartas de Marianna Alcoforada".
--"to form a school of good example in eloquence and poetry"--and it included the most considered writers of the time. Garção composed the "Cantata de Dido", a classic gem, and many excellent sonnets, odes, and epistles. The bucolic verse of Quita has the tenderness and simplicity of that of Bernardin Ribeiro, while in the mock-heroic poem, "Hyssope", Cruz e Silva satirizes ecclesiastical jealousies, local types, and the prevailing gallomania with real humour. Intestine disputes led to the dissolution of the Arcadia in 1774, but it had done good service by raising the standards of taste and introducing new poetical forms. Unfortunately its adherents were too apt to content themselves with imitating the ancient classics and the Quinhentistas and they adopted a cold, reasoned style of expression, without emotion or colouring. Their whole outlook was painfully academic. Many of the Arcadians followed the example of a latter-day Maecenas, the Conde de Ericeira, and endeavoured to nationalize the pseudo-classicism which obtained in France. In 1790 the "New Arcadia" came into being and had in Bocage a man who, under other conditions, might have been a great poet. His talent led him to react against the general mediocrity and though he achieved no sustained flights, his sonnets vie with those of Camoens. He was a master of short improvised lyrics as of satire, which he used to effect in the "Pena de Talião" against Agostinho de Macedo.
This turbulent priest constituted himself a literary dictator and in "Os Burros" surpassed all other bards in invective, moreover he sought to supplant the Lusiads by a tasteless epic, "Oriente". He, however, introduced the didactic poem, his odes reach a high level, and his letters and political pamphlets display learning and versatility, but his influence on letters was hurtful. The only other Arcadian worthy of mention is Curvo Semedo, but the "Dissidents", a name given to those poets who remained outside the Arcadias, include three men who show independence and a sense of reality, José Anastacio da Cunha, Nicolão Tolentino, and Francisco Manoel de Nascimento, better known as Filinto Elysio. The first versified in a philosophic and tender strain, the second sketched the custom and follies of the time in quintilhas of abundant wit and realism, the third spent a long life of exile in Paris in reviving the cult of the sixteenth-century poets, purified the language of Gallicism
s and enriched it by numerous works, original and translated. Though lacking imagination, his contos, or scenes of Portuguese life, strike a new note of reality, and his blank verse translation of the "Martyrs" of Chateaubriand is a high performance. Shortly before his death he became a convert to the Romantic Movement, for whose triumph in the person of Almeida-Garrett he had prepared the way.
began to contribute to Portuguese letters. Manuel da Costa
wrote a number of Petrarchian sonnet
s, Manuel Inácio da Silva Alvarenga
showed himself an ardent lyricist and cultivator of form, Tomás Antônio Gonzaga
became famous by the harmonious verses of his love poem "Marília de Dirceu
", while the "Poesias sacras" of António Pereira Sousa Caldas have a certain mystical charm though metrically hard. In epic poetry the chief name is that of Basílio da Gama
, whose "O Uraguai
" deals with the struggle between the Portuguese and the Paraguay Indians. It is written in blank verse
and has some notable episodes. The "Caramuru
" of Santa Rita Durão
begins with the discovery of Bahia
and contains, in a succession of pictures, the early history of Brazil
. The passages descriptive of native customs are well written and these poems are superior to anything of the kind produced contemporaneously by the mother country.
who had become acquainted with the English and French Romanticism in exile and based his work on the national traditions. In the narrative poem "Camões" (1825) he broke with the established rules of composition and followed it with "Flores sem Fructo" and a collection of ardent love poems "Folhas Cahidas", while the clear elegant prose of this true artist is seen in a miscellany of romance and criticism, "Viagens na minha terra".
The poetry of the austere Herculano has a religious or patriotic motive and is reminiscent of Lamennais. The movement initiated by Garrett and Herculano became ultra-Romantic with Castilho, a master of metre, who lacked ideas, and the verses of João de Lemos and the melancholy Soares de Passos record a limited range of personal emotions, while their imitators voice sentiments which they have not felt deeply or at all. Thomas Ribeiro, author of the patriotic poem "D. Jayme", is sincere, but belongs to the same school which thought too much of form and melody.
In 1865 some young poets led by Anthero de Quental, and future president Teófilo Braga
, rebelled against the domination over letters which Castilho had assumed, and, under foreign influences, proclaimed the alliance of philosophy with poetry. A fierce pamphlet war heralded the downfall of Castilho and poetry gained in breadth and reality, though in many instances it became non-Christian and revolutionary.
Quental produced finely wrought, pessimistic sonnets inspired by neo-Buddhistic and German agnostic ideas, while Braga, a Positivist, compiled an epic of humanity, the "Visão dos Tempos".
Guerra Junqueiro
is mainly ironic in the "Morte de D. João", in "Patria" he evokes and scourges the Braganza kings in some powerful scenes, and in "Os Simples" interprets nature and rural life by the light of a pantheistic imagination. Gomes Leal is merely anti-Christian with touches of Baudelaire. João de Deus
belonged to no school; an idealist, he drew inspiration from religion and women, and the earlier verses of the "Campo de Flores" are marked, now by tender feeling, now by sensuous mysticism, all very Portuguese.
Other true poets are the sonneteer João Penha, the Parnassian Goncalves Crespo
, and the symbolist Eugenio de Castro
. The reaction against the use of verse for the propaganda of radicalism in religion and politics has succeeded and the most considered poets of the early twentieth century, Correa de Oliveira, and Lopes Vieira, were natural singers with no extraneous purpose to serve. They owe much to the "Só" of Antonio Nobre
, a book of true race poetry.
undertook the reform of the stage on independent lines, though he learnt something from the Anglo-German school. Anxious to find a national drama, he chose subjects from Portuguese history and, beginning with "An Auto of Gil Vicente", produced a series of prose plays which culminated in "Brother Luiz de Sousa", a masterpiece. His imitators, Mendes Leal and Pinheiro Chagas, fell victims to ultra-Romanticism, but Fernando Caldeira and Gervasio Lobato wrote life-like and witty comedies and recently the regional pieces of D. João da Camara have won success, even outside Portugal. At the present time, with the historical and social plays of Lopes de Mendonca, Julio Dantas
, Marcellino Mesquita, and Eduardo Schwalbach, drama is more flourishing than ever before and Garrett's work has fructified fifty years after his death.
by Alexandre Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo, to whom succeeded Rebello da Silva with A Mocidade de D. João V, Andrade Corvo, and others. The romance of manners is due to the versatile Camillo Castello Branco, a rich impressionist who describes to perfection the life of the early part of the century in Amor de Perdição, Novellas do Minho, and other books. Gomes Coelho (Julio Dinis
), a romantic idealist and subjective writer, is known best by As Pupillas do Snr Reitor, but the great creative artist was José Maria de Eça de Queiroz, founder of the Naturalist School
, and author of Primo Basilio, Correspondencia de Fradique Mendes, A Cidade e as Serras. His characters live and many of his descriptive and satiric passages have become classical. Among the lesser novelists are Pinheiro Chagas, Arnaldo Gama Luiz de Magalhães, Teixeira de Queiroz, and Malheiro Dias.
ranks as a painter of scenes and characters in Os Filhos de D. João and Vida de Nun' Alvares. A strong gift of humour distinguishes the As Farpas of Ramalho Ortigão
, as well as the work of Fialho d'Almeida and Julio Cesar Machado, and literary criticism had able exponents in Luciano Cordeiro
and Moniz Barreto. The Panorama under the editorship of Herculano exercised a sound and wide influence over letters, but since that time the press has become less and less literary and now treats of little save politics.
or Luís Vaz Camoens (1524 - June 10, 1580) was the author of the epic poem The Lusiad. (In the Victorian era
, he was both sufficiently admired and sufficiently obscure for Elizabeth Barrett Browning
to disguise her work by entitling it Sonnets from the Portuguese
, a reference to Camões).
The Portuguese national holiday, "Portugal's Day" or "Dia de Portugal, das Comunidades Portuguesas e de Camões" (Portugal's, Portuguese Communities' and Camoens' Day), is celebrated on June 10, the anniversary of Camões' death. It is a day of national pride similar to the "Independence Day" celebrated in other countries.
, near Oporto, he traveled throughout the world as a consul. He accepted an assignment to the consulate of Paris
in 1888 and remained there until his death on August 16, 1900. The books he wrote in Paris are critical of Portuguese society. His most famous works include Os Maias
(The Maias) (1878) , O Crime do Padre Amaro
(The Crime of Father Amaro) (1876) and O Primo Bazilio (Cousin Basílio) (1878). Nicknamed the "Portuguese Zola
," Eça was the founder of Portuguese Naturalism
.
In 2002, the Mexican director Carlos Carrera
made a motion picture, "El Crimen del Padre Amaro" ("The Crime of Father Amaro"), adapted from Queirós' novel. One of the most successful Mexican films in history, it was also controversial because of its depiction of Catholic priesthood
.
(1888–1935) was a Portuguese poet. He used heteronyms
, where he wrote in different styles as if he were more than one poet. One of his most famous works was an adaptation of the Lusiad called The Message (A Mensagem).
The Message discusses the Sebastianism
and Portuguese prophecies, that were created and prophesized during the time of Camoens. The Portuguese await the return of the dead king on a foggy day - the return of National Me (Eu Nacional) that will take Portugal, once more, to govern the Fifth Empire.
studied at the University of Coimbra, and soon distinguished himself by unusual talent, as well as turbulence and eccentricity. He began to write poetry at an early age, chiefly, though not entirely, devoting himself to the sonnet. After the publication of one volume of verse, he entered with great warmth into the revolt of the young men which dethroned António Feliciano de Castilho, the chief living poet of the elder generation, from his place as dictator over modern Portuguese literature. He then travelled, engaged on his return in political and socialistic agitations, and found his way through a series of disappointments to the mild pessimism, a kind of Western Buddhism, which animates his latest poetical productions. His melancholy was increased by a spinal disease, which after several years of retirement from the world, eventually drove him to suicide in his native island.
Antero stands at the head of modern Portuguese poetry after João de Deus. His principal defect is monotony: his own self is his solitary theme, and he seldom attempts any other form of composition than the sonnet. On the other hand, few poets who have chiefly devoted themselves to this form have produced so large a proportion of really exquisite work. The comparatively few pieces in which be either forgets his doubts and inward conflicts, or succeeds in giving them an objective form, are among the most beautiful in any literature. The purely introspective sonnets are less attractive, but equally finely wrought, interesting as psychological studies, and impressive from their sincerity. His mental attitude is well described by himself as the effect of Germanism on the unprepared mind of a Southerner. He had learned much, and half-learned more, which he was unable to assimilate, and his mind became a chaos of conflicting ideas, settling down into a condition of gloomy negation, save for the one conviction of the vanity of existence, which ultimately destroyed him. A healthy participation in public affairs might have saved him, but he seemed incapable of entering upon any course that did not lead to delusion and disappointment. The great popularity acquired, notwithstanding, by poetry so metaphysical and egotistic is a testimony to the artistic instinct of the Portuguese.
As a prose writer Quental displayed high talents, though he wrote little. His most important prose work is the Considerações sobre a philosophia da historia literaria Portugueza, but he earned fame by his pamphlets on the Coimbra question, Bom senso e bom gosto, a letter to Castilho, and A dignidade das lettras e litteraturas officiaes.
His friend Oliveira Martins edited the Sonnets (Oporto, 1886), supplying an introductory essay; and an interesting collection of studies on the poet by the leading Portuguese writers appeared in a volume entitled Anthero de Quental. In Memoriam (Oporto, 1896). The sonnets have been turned into most European languages; into English by Edgar Prestage (Anthero de Quental, Sixty-four Sonnets, London, 1894), together with a striking autobiographical letter addressed by Quental to his German translator, Dr Storck.
In 1948, O'Neill was among the founders of the Lisbon Surrealist Movement, along with Mário Cesariny, José-Augusto França and others. His writings soon diverged from surrealist to form an original style whose poetry reflects a love/hate relationship with his country.
His most salient characteristics - a disrespect of conventions, both social and literary, an attitude of permanent revolt, playfulness with language, and the use of parody and black humor - are used to form a body of incisive depictions of what is to be Portuguese and his relation with the country.
O’Neill was in permanent conflict with Portugal. While other contemporaries wrote poems that protested against national life under Salazar, O’Neill’s attack ran deeper. Poems such as ‘Standing at Fearful Attention’ and ‘Portugal’ suggested that the dictatorial regime was a symptom (the worst symptom) of graver ills – lack of courage and smallness of vision – woven into the nation’s psyche. Other poems, such as ‘Lament of the Man Who Misses Being Blind’, seemed to hold religion and mysticism responsible for an obscurantism that made change difficult if not impossible.
A publicist by profession, famed for inventing some of the most ingenious advertising slogans of his time, O’Neill was unusually adept at manipulating words and using them in an efficacious manner, but he refused to put that talent at the service of a lyrically lofty, feel-good sort of poetry (see ‘Simply Expressive’). Stridently anti-Romantic, concerned to keep humanity in its place as just one of earth’s species, he did not believe that an especially harmonious world was possible, and he abhorred all attempts to escape the world, whether through mystical or poetical exaltations. His one hope, or consolation, explicitly stated in ‘St. Francis’s Empty Sandal’, was in the connection (never entirely peaceful) he felt with other members of the species.
Although most of his works are lost or out of sight in private collections he was also a painter and a graphic composer of immense talent. Some of his work was shown, to great surprise and admiration, in 2002 at an exhibit on the surrealist movement.
(1922–2010) was a Portuguese novelist, who wrote such works as "Memorial do Convento", and won the Nobel Prize in 1998.
See: Rogério Miguel Puga, Chronology of Portuguese Literature 1128-2000, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, 2011.
The Portuguese language
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
was developed gradually from the Vulgar language (i.e. Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
) spoken in the countries which formed part of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
and, both in morphology and syntax, it represents an organic transformation of Latin without the direct intervention of any foreign tongue. The sounds, grammatical forms, and syntactical types, with a few exceptions, are derived from Latin, but the vocabulary has absorbed a number of Germanic
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
and Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
words, and a few have Celtic
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family...
origin. Before the close of the Middle Ages the language threatened to become almost as abbreviated as French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, but learned writers, in their passion for antiquity, re-approximated the vocabulary to Latin. The Renaissance commenced a separation between literary men and the people, between the written and spoken tongue, which with some exceptions lasted until the beginning of the 19th century. Then the Romanticists went back to tradition and drew on the poetry and every day speech of the people, and, thanks to the writings of such men as Almeida Garrett
Almeida Garrett
João Baptista da Silva Leitão de Almeida Garrett, Viscount of Almeida Garrett was a Portuguese poet, playwright, novelist and politician. He is considered to be the introducer of the Romanticism in Portugal, with the epic poem Camões, based on the life of Luís de Camões...
and Camilo Castelo Branco
Camilo Castelo Branco
Camilo Ferreira Botelho Castelo-Branco,1st Viscount de Correia Botelho , was a prolific Portuguese writer of the 19th century, having authored over 260 books . His writing is, overall, considered original in that it combines the dramatic and sentimental spirit of Romanticism with a highly personal...
, the literary language became national once again.
Birth of a literary language
Verse
It has been argued (by great early scholars such as Henry Roseman Lang and Carolina Michaëlis de VasconcellosCarolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos
Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos, born Karoline Michaelis was a German-Portuguese romanist.She was born in Berlin as the last of five children of Gustav Michaelis, a mathematics teacher...
) that an indigenous popular poetry existed before the beginning of the written record, although the first datable poems (a handful between around 1200 and 1225) show influences from Provence
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
. These poems were composed in a language called Galician-Portuguese
Galician-Portuguese
Galician-Portuguese or Old Portuguese was a West Iberian Romance language spoken in the Middle Ages, in the northwest area of the Iberian Peninsula. It was first spoken in the area bounded in the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and the Douro River in the south but it was later extended south...
(or Galego-Portuguese), the common ancestor of modern Galician and Portuguese. The first known venues of poetic activity were aristocratic courts in Galicia and the North of Portugal (we know this thanks to the recent work of the Portuguese historian Antonio Resende de Oliveira). After that the center shifted to the court of Alfonso X (The Wise King), King of Castile and Leon (etc.). Some of the same poets (and others) practiced their craft in the court of King Alfonso III, who had been educated in France. The main manuscript sources for Galician-Portuguese verse are the Cancioneiro da Ajuda probably a late 13th century manuscript, the Cancioneiro da Vaticana
Cancioneiro da Vaticana
The Cancioneiro da Vaticana is a compilation of troubadour lyrics in Galician-Portuguese. It was discovered c. 1840 in the holdings of the Vatican Library and was first transcribed by Ernesto Monaci in 1875....
and the Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional
Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional
The Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional , commonly called Colocci-Brancuti, is a compilation of Galician-Portuguese lyrics by both troubadours and jograes...
(also called Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti). Both these latter codices were copied in Rome at the behest of the Italian humanist Angelo Colocci
Angelo Colocci
Angelo Colocci of Rome, papal secretary of Pope Leo X and a Renaissance humanist at the collegial center of literary and artistic classicism, assembled a collection of antiquities in his villa beside the Aqua Virgo.- Biography :...
, probably around 1525.
There was a late flowering during the reign of King Dinis I (1261–1325), a very learned man, whose output is the largest preserved (137 texts). The main genres practiced were the male-voiced cantiga d'amor, the female-voiced cantiga d'amigo (though all the poets were male) and the poetry of insult, called cantigas d'escarnio e maldizer (songs of scorn and insult). This 13th century Court poetry, which deals mainly with love and personal insult (often wrongly called satire), by no means derives entirely from Provençal models and conventions (as is often said). Most scholars and critics favor the cantigas d'amigo, which probably were "rooted in local folksong" (Henry Roseman Lang, 1894), and in any event are the largest surviving body of female-voiced love lyric that has survived from ancient or medieval Europe. The total corpus of medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric, excluding the Cantigas de Santa Maria
Cantigas de Santa Maria
The Cantigas de Santa Maria are 420 poems with musical notation, written in Galician-Portuguese during the reign of Alfonso X El Sabio and often attributed to him....
, consists of around 1685 texts. In addition to the large manuscripts named above, we also have a few songs with music in the Vindel Parchment, which contains melodies for six cantigas d'amigo of Martin Codax
Martín Codax
Martín Codax or Martim Codax was a Galician medieval jogral , possibly from Vigo, Galicia in present day Spain. He may have been active during the middle of the thirteenth century, judging from scriptological analysis...
, and the Pergaminho Sharrer
Pergaminho Sharrer
The Pergaminho Sharrer is the name given to a mediaeval parchment fragment containing seven songs by King Dinis I of Portugal, with lyrics in the Galician-Portuguese language and musical notation....
, a fragment of a folio with seven cantigas d'amor of King Dinis. In both these manuscripts the poems are the same we find in the larger codices and moreover in the same order.
Garcia de Resende
Garcia de Resende was a Portuguese poet and editor. He served John II as a page and private secretary, and later became a knight in the Order of Christ...
. Meanwhile the people were elaborating a ballad poetry of their own, the body of which is known as the Romanceiro. It consists of lyrico-narrative poems treating of war, chivalry, adventure, religious legends, and the sea, many of which have great beauty and contain traces of the varied civilizations which have existed in the peninsula. When the Court poets had exhausted the artifices of Provençal lyricism, they imitated the poetry of the people, giving it a certain vogue which lasted until the Classical Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
. It was then thrust into the background, and though cultivated by a few, it remained unknown to men of letters until the nineteenth century, when Almeida-Garrett began his literary revival and collected folk poems from the mouths of the peasantry.
Prose
Prose developed later than verse and first appeared in the 13th century in the shape of short chronicles, lives of saints, and genealogical treatises called Livros de Linhagens. In Portuguese chanson de gesteChanson de geste
The chansons de geste, Old French for "songs of heroic deeds", are the epic poems that appear at the dawn of French literature. The earliest known examples date from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, nearly a hundred years before the emergence of the lyric poetry of the trouvères and...
has survived to this day, but there are medieval poems of romantic adventure given prose form; for example, the Demanda do Santo Graal (Quest for the Holy Grail) and "Amadis of Gaul". The first three books of the latter probably received their present shape from João Lobeira
João Lobeira
João Lobeira was a Portuguese troubadour of the time of King Afonso III, who is supposed to have been the first to reduce into prose the story of Amadis de Gaula....
, a troubadour of the end of the 13th century, though this original has been lost and only a 16th century Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
version remains. The Book of Aesop also belongs to this period. Though the cultivated taste of the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
affected to despise the medieval stories, it adopted them with alterations as a homage to classical antiquity. Hence came the cycle of the "Palmerins" and the Chronica do Emperador Clarimundo of João de Barros
João de Barros
João de Barros , called the Portuguese Livy, is one of the first great Portuguese historians, most famous for his Décadas da Ásia , a history of the Portuguese in India and Asia.-Early years:...
. The medieval romance of chivalry gave place to the pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
novel, the first example of which is the Saudades of Bernardim Ribeiro
Bernardim Ribeiro
Bernardim Ribeiro was a Portuguese poet and writer. His father, Damião Ribeiro, was implicated in the conspiracy against John II of Portugal...
, followed by the Diana of Jorge de Montemayor
Jorge de Montemayor
Jorge de Montemayor was a Portuguese novelist and poet, who wrote almost exclusively in Spanish.-Biography:He was born at Montemor-o-Velho , whence he derived his name, the Spanish form of which is Montemayor....
, a Portuguese writer who wrote in Spanish. Later in the sixteenth century Gonçalo Fernandes Trancoso, a fascinating storyteller, produced his Historias de Proveito e Exemplo.
Prose
A new epoch in literature dates from the Revolution of 1383-1385. King John IJohn I of Portugal
John I KG , called the Good or of Happy Memory, more rarely and outside Portugal the Bastard, was the tenth King of Portugal and the Algarve and the first to use the title Lord of Ceuta...
wrote a book of the chase, his sons, King Duarte and D. Pedro, composed moral treatises, and an anonymous scribe told with charming naïveté the story of the heroic Nuno Alvares Pereira
Nuno Álvares Pereira
Dom Nuno Álvares Pereira, O. Carm. , also spelled Nun'Álvares Pereira, was a Portuguese general of great success who had a decisive role in the 1383-1385 Crisis that assured Portugal's independence from Castile...
in the Chronica do Condestavel. The line of the chroniclers which is one of the boasts of Portuguese literature began with Fernão Lopes
Fernão Lopes
Fernão Lopes was a Portuguese chronicler appointed by King Edward of Portugal. Fernão Lopes wrote the history of Portugal, but only a part of his work remained....
, who compiled the chronicles of the reigns of Kings Pedro I
Peter I of Portugal
Peter I , called the Just , was the eighth King of Portugal and the Algarve from 1357 until his death. He was the third but only surviving son of Afonso IV of Portugal and his wife, princess Beatrice of Castile....
, Fernando, and John I
John I of Portugal
John I KG , called the Good or of Happy Memory, more rarely and outside Portugal the Bastard, was the tenth King of Portugal and the Algarve and the first to use the title Lord of Ceuta...
. He combined a passion for accurate statement with a special talent for descriptive writing and portraiture, and with him a new epoch dawns. Azurara, who succeeded him in the post of official chronicler, and wrote the Chronicle of Guinea and chronicles of the African wars, is an equally reliable historian, whose style is marred by pedantry and moralizing. His successor, Ruy de Pina, avoids these defects and, though not an artist like Lopes, gives a useful record of the reigns of Kings Duarte, Alfonso V
Afonso V of Portugal
Afonso V KG , called the African , was the twelfth King of Portugal and the Algarves. His sobriquet refers to his conquests in Northern Africa.-Early life:...
, and John II
John II of Portugal
John II , the Perfect Prince , was the thirteenth king of Portugal and the Algarves...
. His history of the latter monarch was appropriated by the poet Garcia de Resende
Garcia de Resende
Garcia de Resende was a Portuguese poet and editor. He served John II as a page and private secretary, and later became a knight in the Order of Christ...
, who adorned it, adding many anecdotes he had learned during his intimacy with John, and issued it under his own name.
Poetry
The introduction of Italian poetryItalian poetry
-Important Italian poets:* Giacomo da Lentini a 13th Century poet who is believed to have invented the sonnet.* Guido Cavalcanti Tuscan poet, and a key figure in the Dolce Stil Novo movement....
, especially that of Petrarch
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
, into the peninsula led to a revival of Spanish verse, which dominated Portugal throughout the fifteenth century. Constable Dom Pedro
Dom Pedro
Dom Pedro is the traditional Portuguese appellation of several kings of Portugal:* Peter I of Portugal* Peter II of Portugal* Peter III of Portugal* Pedro IV of Portugal* Pedro V of Portugal...
, friend of the Marquis of Santillana
Íñigo López de Mendoza, marqués de Santillana
Don Íñigo López de Mendoza y de la Vega, Marquis of Santillana was a Castilian politician and poet who held an important position in society and Literature during the reign of John II of Castile....
, wrote almost entirely in Castilian
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and is the first representative of the Spanish influence which imported from Italy the love of allegory and reverence for classical antiquity. The court poetry of some three hundred knights and gentlemen of the time of Alfonso V and John II is contained in the "Cancioneiro Geral", compiled by Resende and inspired by Juan de Mena
Juan de Mena
Juan de Mena was one of the most significant Spanish poets of the fifteenth century. He was highly regarded at the court of Juan II de Castilla, who appointed him veinticuatro of Córdoba, secretario de cartas latinas and cronista real...
, Jorge Manrique
Jorge Manrique
Jorge Manrique was a major Spanish poet, whose main work, the Coplas a la muerte de su padre , is still read today...
, and other Spaniards. The subjects of these mostly artificial verses are love and satire. Among the few that reveal special talent and genuine poetical feeling are Resende's lines on the death of D. Ignez de Castro
Inês de Castro
Inês Peres de Castro was a Galician noblewoman born of a Portuguese mother...
, the "Fingimento de Amores" of Diogo Brandão, and the "Coplas" of D. Pedro. Three names appear in the "Cancioneiro" which were destined to create a literary revolution, those of Bernardim Ribeiro
Bernardim Ribeiro
Bernardim Ribeiro was a Portuguese poet and writer. His father, Damião Ribeiro, was implicated in the conspiracy against John II of Portugal...
, Gil Vicente
Gil Vicente
Gil Vicente , called the Trobadour, was a Portuguese playwright and poet who acted in and directed his own plays. Considered the chief dramatist of Portugal he is sometimes called the "Portuguese Plautus,"[3] often referred to as the "Father of Portuguese drama" and as one of Western literature's...
, and Sá de Miranda.
Pastoral Poetry
Portuguese pastoral poetry is more natural and sincere than that of the other nations because Ribeiro, the founder of the bucolic school, sought inspiration in the national serranilhas, but his eclogues, despite their feeling and rhythmic harmony, are surpassed by the "Crisfal" of Christovão FalcãoChristovão Falcão
Christovão Falcão , sometimes Christovão Falcão de Sousa or Christovão de Sousa Falcão, was a Portuguese poet, that came of a noble family settled at Portalegre in the Alentejo, which had originated with John Falcon or Falconet, one of the Englishmen who went to Portugal in 1386 in the suite of...
. These and the eclogues and sententious "Cartas" of Sá de Miranda are written in versos de arte mayor, and the popular medida velha (as the national metre was afterwards called to distinguish it from the Italian endecasyllable), continued to be used by Camoens in his so-called minor works, by Bandarra
António Gonçalves de Bandarra
António Gonçalves Annes Bandarra or Gonçalo Anes Bandarra was a Portuguese writer and prophet.- Life and work :...
for his prophecies, and by Gil Vicente.
Drama
Though Gil VicenteGil Vicente
Gil Vicente , called the Trobadour, was a Portuguese playwright and poet who acted in and directed his own plays. Considered the chief dramatist of Portugal he is sometimes called the "Portuguese Plautus,"[3] often referred to as the "Father of Portuguese drama" and as one of Western literature's...
did not originate dramatic representations, he is the father of the Portuguese stage. Of his forty-four pieces, fourteen are in Portuguese, eleven in Castilian, the remainder bilingual, and they consist of autos, or devotional works, tragicomedies, and farces. Beginning in 1502 with religious pieces, conspicuous among them being "Auto da Alma" and the famous trilogy of the "Barcas", he soon introduces the comic and satirical element by way of relief and for moral ends, and, before the close of his career in 1536, has arrived at pure comedy, as in "Ignez Pereira" and the "Floresta de Enganos", and developed the study of character. The plots are simple, the dialogue spirited, the lyrics often of finished beauty, and while Gil Vicente appeared too early to be a great dramatist, his plays mirror to perfection the types, customs, language, and daily life of all classes. The playwrights who followed him had neither superior talents nor court patronage and, attacked by the classical school for their lack of culture and by the Inquisition for their grossness, they were reduced to entertaining the lower class at country fairs and festivals.
First classical phase: The Renaissance
The Renaissance produced a pleiad of distinguished poets, historians, critics, antiquaries, theologians, and moralists which made the sixteenth century a golden age.Lyric and epic poetry
Sá de Miranda introduced Italian forms of verse and raised the tone of poetry. He was followed by António FerreiraAntónio Ferreira
António Ferreira was a Portuguese poet and the foremost representative of the classical school, founded by Francisco de Sá de Miranda. His most considerable work, Castro, is the first tragedy in Portuguese, and the second in modern European literature.-His life:Ferreira was a native of Lisbon...
, a superior stylist, by Diogo Bernardes, and Andrade Caminha, but the Quinhentistas tended to lose spontaneity in their imitation of classical models, though the verse of Frei Agostinho da Cruz is an exception. The genius of Luís de Camões
Luís de Camões
Luís Vaz de Camões is considered Portugal's and the Portuguese language's greatest poet. His mastery of verse has been compared to that of Shakespeare, Vondel, Homer, Virgil and Dante. He wrote a considerable amount of lyrical poetry and drama but is best remembered for his epic work Os Lusíadas...
, called "Camoens" in English, led him to fuse the best elements of the Italian and popular muse, thus creating a new poetry. Imitators arose in the following centuries, but most of their epics are little more than chronicles in verse. They include three by Jerónimo Corte-Real
Jerónimo Corte-Real
Jerónimo Corte-Real was Portuguese epic poet, who came of a noble Portuguese stock. He is sometimes regarded as the Portuguese Virgil....
, and one each by Pereira Brandão, Francisco de Andrade, Rodriguez Lobo, Pereira de Castro, Sá de Menezes, and Garcia de Mascarenhas.
The classical plays
Sá de Miranda endeavoured also to reform the drama and, shaping himself on Italian models, wrote the "Estrangeiros". Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos had produced in "Eufrosina" the first prose play, but the comedies of Sá and Antonio Ferreira are artificial and stillborn productions, though the latter's tragedy, "Ignez de Castro", if dramatically weak, has something of Sophocles in the spirit and form of the verse.Prose
The best prose work of the sixteenth century is devoted to history and travel. João de BarrosJoão de Barros
João de Barros , called the Portuguese Livy, is one of the first great Portuguese historians, most famous for his Décadas da Ásia , a history of the Portuguese in India and Asia.-Early years:...
in his "Decadas", continued by Diogo do Couto, described with mastery the deeds achieved by the Portuguese in the discovery and conquest of the lands and seas of the Orient. Damião de Gois
Damião de Góis
Damiao de Góis , born in Alenquer, Portugal, was an important Portuguese humanist philosopher. He was a friend and student of Erasmus. He was appointed secretary to the Portuguese factory in Antwerp in 1523 by King John III of Portugal...
, humanist and friend of Erasmus, wrote with rare independence on the reign of King Manuel the Fortunate. Bishop Osorio treated of the same subject in Latin, but his interesting "Cartas" are in the vulgar tongue. Among others who dealt with the East are Castanheda, Antonio Galvão, Gaspar Correia
Gaspar Correia
Gaspar Correia or Gaspar Corrêa was a Portuguese historian, author of "Lendas da Índia , one of the earliest and most important works about Portuguese rule in Asia, being referred to as a Portuguese Polybius.- Biography :There is little information about the life of the author...
, Bras de Albuquerque, Frei Gaspar da Cruz, and Frei João dos Santos. The chronicles of the kingdom were continued by Francisco de Andrade and Frei Bernardo da Cruz, and Miguel Leitão de Andrade compiled an interesting volume of "Miscellanea". The travel literature of the period is too large for detailed mention: Persia, Syria, Abyssinia, Florida, and Brazil were visited and described and Father Lucena compiled a classic life of St. Francis Xavier, but the "Peregrination" of Mendes Pinto, a typical Conquistador, is worth all the story books put together for its extrãordinary adventures told in a vigorous style, full of colour and life, while the "Historia Tragico-Maritima", a record of notable shipwrecks between 1552 and 1604, has good specimens of simple anonymous narrative. The dialogues of Samuel Usque, a Lisbon Jew, also deserve mention. Religious subjects were usually treated in Latin, but among moralists who used the vernacular were Frei Heitor Pinto, Bishop Arraez, and Frei Thome de Jesus, whose "Trabalhos de Jesus" has appeared in many languages.
Second Classical Phase: Baroque
The general inferiority of seventeenth-century literature to that of the preceding age has been blamed on the new royal absolutism, the Inquisition, the Index, and the exaggerated humanism of the Jesuits who directed higher education; nevertheless, had a man of genius appeared he would have overcome all obstacles. In fact letters shared in the national decline. The taint of Gongorism and Marinism attacked all the Seiscentistas, as may be seen in the "Fenix Renascida", and rhetoric conquered style. The Revolution of 1640 liberated Portugal, but could not undo the effects of the sixty years' union with Spain. The use of Spanish continued among the upper class and was preferred by many authors who desired a larger audience. Spain had given birth to great writers for whom the Portuguese forgot the earlier ones of their own land. The foreign influence was strongest in the drama. The leading Portuguese playwrights wrote in Spanish, and in the national tongue only poor religious pieces and a witty comedy by D. Francisco Manuel de Mello, "Auto do Fidalgo Aprendiz", were produced. The numerous Academies which arose with exotic names aimed at raising the level of letters, but they spent themselves is discussing ridiculous theses and determined the triumph of pedantry and bad taste. Yet though culteranismo and conceptismo infected nearly everyone, the century did not lack its big names.Lyric Poetry
Melodious verses relieve the dullness of the pastoral romances of Rodriguez Lobo, while his "Corte na Aldea" is a book of varied interest in elegant prose. The versatile D. Francisco Manuel de Mello, in addition to his sonnets on moral subjects, wrote pleasing imitations of popular romances, but is at his best in a reasoned but vehement "Memorial to John IV", in the witty "Apologos Dialogaes", and in the homely philosophy of the "Carta de Guia de Casados, prose classics. Other poets of the period are Soror Violante do Ceo, and Frei Jeronymo Vahia, convinced Gongorists, Frei Bernardo de Brito with the "Sylvia de Lizardo", and the satirists, D. Thomas de Noronha and Antonio Serrão de Castro.Prose
The century had a richer output in prose than in verse, and history, biography, sermons, and epistolary correspondence all flourished. Writers on historical subjects were usually friars who worked in their cells and not, as in the sixteenth century, travelled men and eye-witnesses of the events they describe. They occupied themselves largely with questions of form and are better stylists than historians. Among the five contributors to the ponderous "Monarchia Lusitana", only the conscientious Frei Antonio Brandão fully realized the importance of documentary evidence. Frei Bernardo de Brito begins his work with the creation and ends it where he should have begun; he constantly mistakes legend for fact, but was a patient investigator and vigorous narrator. Frei Luis de Sousa, the famous stylist, worked up existing materials into the classical hagiography "Vida de D. Frei Bertholameu dos Martyres" and "Annaes d'el Rei D. João III. Manoel de Faria y Sousa, historian and arch-commentator of Camoens, by a strange irony of fate chose Spanish as his vehicle, as did Mello for his classic account of the Catalonian War, while Jacintho Freire de Andrade told in grandiloquent language the story of justice-loving viceroy, D. João de Castro.Ecclesiastical eloquence was at its best in the seventeenth century and the pulpit filled the place of the press of to-day. The originality and imaginative power of his sermons are said to have won for Father Antonio Vieira in Rome the title of "Prince of Catholic Orators" and though they and his letters exhibit some of the prevailing faults of taste, he is nonetheless great both in ideas and expression. The discourses and devotional treatises of the Oratorian Manuel Bernardes, who was a recluse, have a calm and sweetness that we miss in the writings of a man of action like Vieira and, while equally rich, are purer models of classic Portuguese prose. He is at his best in "Luz e Calor" and the "Nova Floresta". Letter writing is represented by such master hands as D. Francisco Manuel de Mello in familiar epistles, Frei Antonio das Chagas
Antonio das Chagas
Antonio da Fonseca Soares was a Portuguese Franciscan and ascetical writer.-Life:...
in spiritual, and by five short but eloquent documents of human affection, the "Cartas de Marianna Alcoforada".
Third Classical Phase: NeoClassicism
Affectation continued to mark the literature of the first half of the eighteenth century, but signs of a change gradually appeared and ended in that complete literary reformation known as the Romantic Movement. Distinguished men who fled abroad to escape the prevailing despotism did much for intellectual progress by encouragement and example. Verney criticized the obsolete educational methods and exposed the literary and scientific decadence in the "Verdadeiro Methodo de Estudar", while the various Academies and Arcadias, wiser than their predecessors, worked for purity of style and diction, and translated the best foreign classics.The Academies
The Academy of History, established by John V in 1720 in imitation of the French Academy, published fifteen volumes of learned "Memoirs" and laid the foundations for a critical study of the annals of Portugal, among its members being Caetano de Sousa, author of the volumious "Historia da Casa Real", and the bibliographer Barbosa Machado. The Royal Academy of Sciences, founded in 1780, continued the work and placed literary criticism on a sounder basis, but the principal exponents of belles-lettres belonged to the Arcadias.The Arcadians
Of these the most important was the Arcadia Ulisiponense established in 1756 by the poet Cruz e SilvaAntónio Diniz da Cruz e Silva
António Diniz da Cruz e Silva , Portuguese heroic-comic poet, was the son of a Lisbon carpenter who emigrated to Brazil shortly before the poet's birth, leaving his wife to support and educate her young family by the earnings of her needle.-Education:Diniz studied Latin and philosophy with the...
--"to form a school of good example in eloquence and poetry"--and it included the most considered writers of the time. Garção composed the "Cantata de Dido", a classic gem, and many excellent sonnets, odes, and epistles. The bucolic verse of Quita has the tenderness and simplicity of that of Bernardin Ribeiro, while in the mock-heroic poem, "Hyssope", Cruz e Silva satirizes ecclesiastical jealousies, local types, and the prevailing gallomania with real humour. Intestine disputes led to the dissolution of the Arcadia in 1774, but it had done good service by raising the standards of taste and introducing new poetical forms. Unfortunately its adherents were too apt to content themselves with imitating the ancient classics and the Quinhentistas and they adopted a cold, reasoned style of expression, without emotion or colouring. Their whole outlook was painfully academic. Many of the Arcadians followed the example of a latter-day Maecenas, the Conde de Ericeira, and endeavoured to nationalize the pseudo-classicism which obtained in France. In 1790 the "New Arcadia" came into being and had in Bocage a man who, under other conditions, might have been a great poet. His talent led him to react against the general mediocrity and though he achieved no sustained flights, his sonnets vie with those of Camoens. He was a master of short improvised lyrics as of satire, which he used to effect in the "Pena de Talião" against Agostinho de Macedo.
This turbulent priest constituted himself a literary dictator and in "Os Burros" surpassed all other bards in invective, moreover he sought to supplant the Lusiads by a tasteless epic, "Oriente". He, however, introduced the didactic poem, his odes reach a high level, and his letters and political pamphlets display learning and versatility, but his influence on letters was hurtful. The only other Arcadian worthy of mention is Curvo Semedo, but the "Dissidents", a name given to those poets who remained outside the Arcadias, include three men who show independence and a sense of reality, José Anastacio da Cunha, Nicolão Tolentino, and Francisco Manoel de Nascimento, better known as Filinto Elysio. The first versified in a philosophic and tender strain, the second sketched the custom and follies of the time in quintilhas of abundant wit and realism, the third spent a long life of exile in Paris in reviving the cult of the sixteenth-century poets, purified the language of Gallicism
Gallicism
A Gallicism can be:* a mode of speech peculiar to the French;* a French idiom;* in general, a French mode or custom.* loanwords, words or phrases borrowed from French....
s and enriched it by numerous works, original and translated. Though lacking imagination, his contos, or scenes of Portuguese life, strike a new note of reality, and his blank verse translation of the "Martyrs" of Chateaubriand is a high performance. Shortly before his death he became a convert to the Romantic Movement, for whose triumph in the person of Almeida-Garrett he had prepared the way.
Brazilian Poetry
During the eighteenth century the colony of BrazilColonial Brazil
In the history of Brazil, Colonial Brazil, officially the Viceroyalty of Brazil comprises the period from 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese, until 1815, when Brazil was elevated to kingdom alongside Portugal as the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves.During the over 300 years...
began to contribute to Portuguese letters. Manuel da Costa
Manuel da Costa
Manuel da Costa was a Jesuit and bibliographer from Lisbon. After teaching humanities and theology at several schools, like Coimbra where most of the Jesuit letters were available in uncensored form, he was chosen rector of Braga, then missionary to the Azores; he was distinguished by his zeal...
wrote a number of Petrarchian sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
s, Manuel Inácio da Silva Alvarenga
Manuel Inácio da Silva Alvarenga
Manuel Inácio da Silva Alvarenga was a Brazilian poet.-Works:*O Desertor das Letras - heroic-comic poem*Glaura – erotic poems...
showed himself an ardent lyricist and cultivator of form, Tomás Antônio Gonzaga
Tomás Antônio Gonzaga
Tomás Antônio Gonzaga was a Portuguese poet. One of the most famous Neoclassic Brazilian writers, he was also the ouvidor and the ombudsman of the city of Ouro Preto , as well as the desembargador of the appeal court in Bahia...
became famous by the harmonious verses of his love poem "Marília de Dirceu
Marília de Dirceu
Marília de Dirceu is a poetry book written by Luso-Brazilian Neoclassic poet Tomás Antônio Gonzaga. It is divided in three parts — all of them published in different years...
", while the "Poesias sacras" of António Pereira Sousa Caldas have a certain mystical charm though metrically hard. In epic poetry the chief name is that of Basílio da Gama
Basílio da Gama
José Basílio da Gama was a Brazilian-born Portuguese poet and member of the Society of Jesus, famous for the epic poem O Uraguai...
, whose "O Uraguai
O Uraguai
"O Uraguai" is an epic poem by the Brazilian writer Basílio da Gama. This poem is a noted example of the Arcadianism and Indianism in Brazilian Literature...
" deals with the struggle between the Portuguese and the Paraguay Indians. It is written in blank verse
Blank verse
Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...
and has some notable episodes. The "Caramuru
Caramuru
Diogo Álvares Correia , called Caramuru by the Tupinambá, was a Portuguese settler born in Viana do Castelo. He departed for Brazil in 1509, and his ship wrecked in the coast of Bahia, Diogo Álvares found himself among the Tupinamba Indians...
" of Santa Rita Durão
Santa Rita Durão
José de Santa Rita Durão was a Colonial Brazilian Neoclassic poet, orator and Augustinian friar. He is considered a forerunner of the "Indianism" in the literature of Brazil, with his epic poem Caramuru....
begins with the discovery of Bahia
Bahia
Bahia is one of the 26 states of Brazil, and is located in the northeastern part of the country on the Atlantic coast. It is the fourth most populous Brazilian state after São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, and the fifth-largest in size...
and contains, in a succession of pictures, the early history of Brazil
History of Brazil
The history of Brazil begins with the arrival of the first indigenous peoples, thousands of years ago by crossing the Bering land bridge into Alaska and then moving south....
. The passages descriptive of native customs are well written and these poems are superior to anything of the kind produced contemporaneously by the mother country.
Prose
The prose of the century is mainly dedicated to scientific subjects, but the letters of Antonio da Costa, Antonio Ribeiro Sanches, and Alexandre de Gusmão have literary value and those of the celebrated Carvalheiro d'Oliveira, if not so correct, are even more informing.Drama
Though a Court returned to Lisbon in 1640, it preferred, for one hundred and fifty years, Italian opera and French plays to vernacular representations. Early in the eighteenth century several authors sprung from the people vainly attempted to found a national drama. Their pieces mostly belong to low comedy. The "Operas Portuguezas" of Antonio José da Silva, produced between 1733 and 1741, have a real comic strength and a certain originality, and, like those of Nicolau Luiz, exploit with wit the faults and foibles of the age. The latter divided his attention between heroic comedies and comedies de capa y espada and, though wanting in ideas and taste, they enjoyed a long popularity. At the same time the Arcadia endeavoured to raise the standard of the stage, drawing inspiration from the contemporary French drama, but its members lacked dramatic talent and achieved little. Garção wrote two bright comedies, Quita some stillborn tragedies, and Manuel de Figueredo compiled plays in prose and verse on national subjects, which fill thirteen volumes, but he could not create characters.Poetry
The early nineteenth century witnessed a literary reformation which was begun by Almeida GarrettAlmeida Garrett
João Baptista da Silva Leitão de Almeida Garrett, Viscount of Almeida Garrett was a Portuguese poet, playwright, novelist and politician. He is considered to be the introducer of the Romanticism in Portugal, with the epic poem Camões, based on the life of Luís de Camões...
who had become acquainted with the English and French Romanticism in exile and based his work on the national traditions. In the narrative poem "Camões" (1825) he broke with the established rules of composition and followed it with "Flores sem Fructo" and a collection of ardent love poems "Folhas Cahidas", while the clear elegant prose of this true artist is seen in a miscellany of romance and criticism, "Viagens na minha terra".
The poetry of the austere Herculano has a religious or patriotic motive and is reminiscent of Lamennais. The movement initiated by Garrett and Herculano became ultra-Romantic with Castilho, a master of metre, who lacked ideas, and the verses of João de Lemos and the melancholy Soares de Passos record a limited range of personal emotions, while their imitators voice sentiments which they have not felt deeply or at all. Thomas Ribeiro, author of the patriotic poem "D. Jayme", is sincere, but belongs to the same school which thought too much of form and melody.
In 1865 some young poets led by Anthero de Quental, and future president Teófilo Braga
Teófilo Braga
Joaquim Teófilo Fernandes Braga ]] 24 February 1843 – 28 January 1924) was a Portuguese writer, playwright, politician and the leader of the Republican Provisional Government after the abdication of King Manuel II, as well as the second elected President of the First Portuguese Republic, following...
, rebelled against the domination over letters which Castilho had assumed, and, under foreign influences, proclaimed the alliance of philosophy with poetry. A fierce pamphlet war heralded the downfall of Castilho and poetry gained in breadth and reality, though in many instances it became non-Christian and revolutionary.
Quental produced finely wrought, pessimistic sonnets inspired by neo-Buddhistic and German agnostic ideas, while Braga, a Positivist, compiled an epic of humanity, the "Visão dos Tempos".
Guerra Junqueiro
Guerra Junqueiro
Abilio Manuel Guerra Junqueiro was a Portuguese, bachelor in law at the University of Coimbra, a top civil servant, member of the Portuguese House of Representatives, journalist, author, and poet. His work helped inspire the creation of the Portuguese First Republic...
is mainly ironic in the "Morte de D. João", in "Patria" he evokes and scourges the Braganza kings in some powerful scenes, and in "Os Simples" interprets nature and rural life by the light of a pantheistic imagination. Gomes Leal is merely anti-Christian with touches of Baudelaire. João de Deus
João de Deus
João de Deus Ramos , better known as João de Deus, the greatest Portuguese poet of his generation, was born in Silves, São Bartolomeu de Messines, in the province of Algarve, son of Pedro José Ramos and wife Isabel Gertrudes Martins...
belonged to no school; an idealist, he drew inspiration from religion and women, and the earlier verses of the "Campo de Flores" are marked, now by tender feeling, now by sensuous mysticism, all very Portuguese.
Other true poets are the sonneteer João Penha, the Parnassian Goncalves Crespo
Gonçalves Crespo
António Cândido Gonçalves Crespo was a Brazilian-born Portuguese poet. Born to a slave mother on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro on March 11, 1846, he came to Portugal at the age of ten. He was educated at the University of Coimbra, but "devoted himself almost exclusively to the Muses at Lisbon."...
, and the symbolist Eugenio de Castro
Eugênio de Castro
Eugénio de Castro with the e accented is also a Portuguese writerEugênio de Castro is a municipality of the western part of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil...
. The reaction against the use of verse for the propaganda of radicalism in religion and politics has succeeded and the most considered poets of the early twentieth century, Correa de Oliveira, and Lopes Vieira, were natural singers with no extraneous purpose to serve. They owe much to the "Só" of Antonio Nobre
António Nobre
António Pereira Nobre was a Portuguese poet. He died of tuberculosis in Foz do Douro, Porto, in 1900, after trying to recover in a number of places. His masterpiece Só , was the only book he published.-Northern Portugal:Nobre was a member of a wealthy family...
, a book of true race poetry.
Drama
After producing some classical tragedies, the best of which is "Cato", Almeida GarrettAlmeida Garrett
João Baptista da Silva Leitão de Almeida Garrett, Viscount of Almeida Garrett was a Portuguese poet, playwright, novelist and politician. He is considered to be the introducer of the Romanticism in Portugal, with the epic poem Camões, based on the life of Luís de Camões...
undertook the reform of the stage on independent lines, though he learnt something from the Anglo-German school. Anxious to find a national drama, he chose subjects from Portuguese history and, beginning with "An Auto of Gil Vicente", produced a series of prose plays which culminated in "Brother Luiz de Sousa", a masterpiece. His imitators, Mendes Leal and Pinheiro Chagas, fell victims to ultra-Romanticism, but Fernando Caldeira and Gervasio Lobato wrote life-like and witty comedies and recently the regional pieces of D. João da Camara have won success, even outside Portugal. At the present time, with the historical and social plays of Lopes de Mendonca, Julio Dantas
Júlio Dantas
Júlio Dantas, GCC was a Portuguese doctor, poet, journalist, politician, diplomat and dramatist.-Biography:...
, Marcellino Mesquita, and Eduardo Schwalbach, drama is more flourishing than ever before and Garrett's work has fructified fifty years after his death.
The Novel
The novel is really a creation of the nineteenth century and it began with historical romances in the style of Walter ScottWalter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
by Alexandre Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo, to whom succeeded Rebello da Silva with A Mocidade de D. João V, Andrade Corvo, and others. The romance of manners is due to the versatile Camillo Castello Branco, a rich impressionist who describes to perfection the life of the early part of the century in Amor de Perdição, Novellas do Minho, and other books. Gomes Coelho (Julio Dinis
Júlio Dinis
Júlio Dinis, pseudonym of Joaquim Guilherme Gomes Coelho was a Portuguese doctor and writer.Júlio Dinis died at the young age of 31 of tuberculosis, and some of its works were published posthumously...
), a romantic idealist and subjective writer, is known best by As Pupillas do Snr Reitor, but the great creative artist was José Maria de Eça de Queiroz, founder of the Naturalist School
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...
, and author of Primo Basilio, Correspondencia de Fradique Mendes, A Cidade e as Serras. His characters live and many of his descriptive and satiric passages have become classical. Among the lesser novelists are Pinheiro Chagas, Arnaldo Gama Luiz de Magalhães, Teixeira de Queiroz, and Malheiro Dias.
Other prose
History became a science with Herculano whose Historia de Portugal is also valuable for its sculptural style, and Joaquim Pedro de Oliveira MartinsJoaquim Pedro de Oliveira Martins
Joaquim Pedro de Oliveira Martins was a Portuguese politician and social scientist, son of Francisco Cândido Gonçalves Martins and wife Maria Henriqueta de Morais Gomes de Oliveira Joaquim Pedro de Oliveira Martins (Lisbon, 30 April 1845 – Lisbon, 24 August 1894) was a Portuguese politician...
ranks as a painter of scenes and characters in Os Filhos de D. João and Vida de Nun' Alvares. A strong gift of humour distinguishes the As Farpas of Ramalho Ortigão
Ramalho Ortigão
José Duarte Ramalho Ortigão was a Portuguese writer of the late 19th century and early 20th century. He spent his early years with his maternal grandmother in Oporto....
, as well as the work of Fialho d'Almeida and Julio Cesar Machado, and literary criticism had able exponents in Luciano Cordeiro
Luciano Cordeiro
Luciano Cordeiro was a Portuguese writer.-Publications:* "Livro de crítica" * "Segundo Livro de crítica" * "De la part prise par les Portugais dans la découverte de l’Amérique"...
and Moniz Barreto. The Panorama under the editorship of Herculano exercised a sound and wide influence over letters, but since that time the press has become less and less literary and now treats of little save politics.
Luís Vaz de Camões
The poet Luís Vaz de CamõesLuís de Camões
Luís Vaz de Camões is considered Portugal's and the Portuguese language's greatest poet. His mastery of verse has been compared to that of Shakespeare, Vondel, Homer, Virgil and Dante. He wrote a considerable amount of lyrical poetry and drama but is best remembered for his epic work Os Lusíadas...
or Luís Vaz Camoens (1524 - June 10, 1580) was the author of the epic poem The Lusiad. (In the Victorian era
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
, he was both sufficiently admired and sufficiently obscure for Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.-Early life:Members...
to disguise her work by entitling it Sonnets from the Portuguese
Sonnets from the Portuguese
Sonnets from the Portuguese, written ca. 1845–1846 and first published in 1850, is a collection of forty-four love sonnets written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The poems largely chronicle the period leading up to her 1846 marriage to Robert Browning...
, a reference to Camões).
The Portuguese national holiday, "Portugal's Day" or "Dia de Portugal, das Comunidades Portuguesas e de Camões" (Portugal's, Portuguese Communities' and Camoens' Day), is celebrated on June 10, the anniversary of Camões' death. It is a day of national pride similar to the "Independence Day" celebrated in other countries.
Eça de Queiroz
Eça de Queiroz (1845–1900) is a Portuguese novelist. Born in Póvoa de VarzimPóvoa de Varzim
Póvoa de Varzim is a Portuguese city in the Norte Region and sub-region of Greater Porto, with a 2011 estimated population of 63,364. According to the 2001 census, there were 63,470 inhabitants with 42,396 living in the city proper. The urban area expanded, southwards, to Vila do Conde, and there...
, near Oporto, he traveled throughout the world as a consul. He accepted an assignment to the consulate of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1888 and remained there until his death on August 16, 1900. The books he wrote in Paris are critical of Portuguese society. His most famous works include Os Maias
Os Maias
Os Maias: episódios da vida romântica is a naturalist novel by Portuguese author José Maria de Eça de Queiroz, also known under the modernized spelling Eça de Queirós.As early as 1878, while serving in the Portuguese...
(The Maias) (1878) , O Crime do Padre Amaro
O Crime do Padre Amaro
O Crime do Padre Amaro is a novel by the 19th-century Portuguese writer José Maria de Eça de Queiroz. It was first published in 1875 to great controversy.-Plot summary:...
(The Crime of Father Amaro) (1876) and O Primo Bazilio (Cousin Basílio) (1878). Nicknamed the "Portuguese Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
," Eça was the founder of Portuguese Naturalism
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...
.
In 2002, the Mexican director Carlos Carrera
Carlos Carrera
Carlos Carrera is a Mexican film director and screenwriter. He directed El crimen del Padre Amaro , which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film....
made a motion picture, "El Crimen del Padre Amaro" ("The Crime of Father Amaro"), adapted from Queirós' novel. One of the most successful Mexican films in history, it was also controversial because of its depiction of Catholic priesthood
Priesthood (Catholic Church)
The ministerial orders of the Catholic Church include the orders of bishops, deacons and presbyters, which in Latin is sacerdos. The ordained priesthood and common priesthood are different in function and essence....
.
Fernando Pessoa
Fernando PessoaFernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa, born Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa , was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic and translator described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language.-Early years in Durban:On 13 July...
(1888–1935) was a Portuguese poet. He used heteronyms
Heteronym (literature)
The literary concept of heteronym, invented by Portuguese writer and poet Fernando Pessoa, refers to one or more imaginary character created by a writer to write in different styles...
, where he wrote in different styles as if he were more than one poet. One of his most famous works was an adaptation of the Lusiad called The Message (A Mensagem).
The Message discusses the Sebastianism
Sebastianism
Sebastianism, one aspect of the sleeping king folk-motif, is part of the Portuguese and Brazilian mythology and culture. It means waiting for a hero that will save Portugal and lead it to the Fifth Empire, and known as Eu nacional...
and Portuguese prophecies, that were created and prophesized during the time of Camoens. The Portuguese await the return of the dead king on a foggy day - the return of National Me (Eu Nacional) that will take Portugal, once more, to govern the Fifth Empire.
Antero de Quental
Antero de QuentalAntero de Quental
Antero Tarquínio de Quental , old spelling Anthero, , a Portuguese poet, philosopher and writer, whose works became a milestone in the Portuguese language, alongside those of Camões or Bocage....
studied at the University of Coimbra, and soon distinguished himself by unusual talent, as well as turbulence and eccentricity. He began to write poetry at an early age, chiefly, though not entirely, devoting himself to the sonnet. After the publication of one volume of verse, he entered with great warmth into the revolt of the young men which dethroned António Feliciano de Castilho, the chief living poet of the elder generation, from his place as dictator over modern Portuguese literature. He then travelled, engaged on his return in political and socialistic agitations, and found his way through a series of disappointments to the mild pessimism, a kind of Western Buddhism, which animates his latest poetical productions. His melancholy was increased by a spinal disease, which after several years of retirement from the world, eventually drove him to suicide in his native island.
Antero stands at the head of modern Portuguese poetry after João de Deus. His principal defect is monotony: his own self is his solitary theme, and he seldom attempts any other form of composition than the sonnet. On the other hand, few poets who have chiefly devoted themselves to this form have produced so large a proportion of really exquisite work. The comparatively few pieces in which be either forgets his doubts and inward conflicts, or succeeds in giving them an objective form, are among the most beautiful in any literature. The purely introspective sonnets are less attractive, but equally finely wrought, interesting as psychological studies, and impressive from their sincerity. His mental attitude is well described by himself as the effect of Germanism on the unprepared mind of a Southerner. He had learned much, and half-learned more, which he was unable to assimilate, and his mind became a chaos of conflicting ideas, settling down into a condition of gloomy negation, save for the one conviction of the vanity of existence, which ultimately destroyed him. A healthy participation in public affairs might have saved him, but he seemed incapable of entering upon any course that did not lead to delusion and disappointment. The great popularity acquired, notwithstanding, by poetry so metaphysical and egotistic is a testimony to the artistic instinct of the Portuguese.
As a prose writer Quental displayed high talents, though he wrote little. His most important prose work is the Considerações sobre a philosophia da historia literaria Portugueza, but he earned fame by his pamphlets on the Coimbra question, Bom senso e bom gosto, a letter to Castilho, and A dignidade das lettras e litteraturas officiaes.
His friend Oliveira Martins edited the Sonnets (Oporto, 1886), supplying an introductory essay; and an interesting collection of studies on the poet by the leading Portuguese writers appeared in a volume entitled Anthero de Quental. In Memoriam (Oporto, 1896). The sonnets have been turned into most European languages; into English by Edgar Prestage (Anthero de Quental, Sixty-four Sonnets, London, 1894), together with a striking autobiographical letter addressed by Quental to his German translator, Dr Storck.
Alexandre O'Neill
Alexandre Manuel Vahía de Castro O’Neill (December 19, 1924 - August 21, 1986) was a Portuguese poet of Irish origin.In 1948, O'Neill was among the founders of the Lisbon Surrealist Movement, along with Mário Cesariny, José-Augusto França and others. His writings soon diverged from surrealist to form an original style whose poetry reflects a love/hate relationship with his country.
His most salient characteristics - a disrespect of conventions, both social and literary, an attitude of permanent revolt, playfulness with language, and the use of parody and black humor - are used to form a body of incisive depictions of what is to be Portuguese and his relation with the country.
O’Neill was in permanent conflict with Portugal. While other contemporaries wrote poems that protested against national life under Salazar, O’Neill’s attack ran deeper. Poems such as ‘Standing at Fearful Attention’ and ‘Portugal’ suggested that the dictatorial regime was a symptom (the worst symptom) of graver ills – lack of courage and smallness of vision – woven into the nation’s psyche. Other poems, such as ‘Lament of the Man Who Misses Being Blind’, seemed to hold religion and mysticism responsible for an obscurantism that made change difficult if not impossible.
A publicist by profession, famed for inventing some of the most ingenious advertising slogans of his time, O’Neill was unusually adept at manipulating words and using them in an efficacious manner, but he refused to put that talent at the service of a lyrically lofty, feel-good sort of poetry (see ‘Simply Expressive’). Stridently anti-Romantic, concerned to keep humanity in its place as just one of earth’s species, he did not believe that an especially harmonious world was possible, and he abhorred all attempts to escape the world, whether through mystical or poetical exaltations. His one hope, or consolation, explicitly stated in ‘St. Francis’s Empty Sandal’, was in the connection (never entirely peaceful) he felt with other members of the species.
Although most of his works are lost or out of sight in private collections he was also a painter and a graphic composer of immense talent. Some of his work was shown, to great surprise and admiration, in 2002 at an exhibit on the surrealist movement.
José Saramago
José SaramagoJosé Saramago
José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE was a Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, poet, playwright and journalist. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor. Harold Bloom has described Saramago as "a...
(1922–2010) was a Portuguese novelist, who wrote such works as "Memorial do Convento", and won the Nobel Prize in 1998.
See: Rogério Miguel Puga, Chronology of Portuguese Literature 1128-2000, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, 2011.
See also
- Portuguese language literaturePortuguese language literaturePortuguese language literature can be:* Literature of Angola* Literature of Brazil* Portuguese literature...
- Portuguese languagePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
- Portuguese poetryPortuguese poetry-History:The earliest Portuguese poetry was produced in Galicia, today a Spanish province that shares some similarities with Portuguese culture. Like the troubadour culture in the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe, Galician-Portuguese poets sang the love for a woman, that often turned into...
- Literature of BrazilLiterature of BrazilBrazilian literature is written in the Portuguese language by Brazilians or in Brazil, even if prior to Brazil's independence from Portugal, in 1822...
External links
- Projecto Vercial A big Portuguese literature database.
- Portuguese Literature By Joana Dalila in Accessible Portugal Online Magazine