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| History of Portuguese Literature | Origins of Portuguese Literature | The Portuguese Language | Oral Literature | Fiction | Lyricism |
| Travel Literature | Cantigas de amigo | Historiography | Doctrinal Prose | ||
Os Lusíadas
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An
epic poem (1572) by Luís de Camões, inspired by
classical literature (in keeping with Vergil’s Aeneid),
but with a distinctly contemporary flavour, based on observation and consisting
of ten cantos composed of ten-verse stanzas in heroic decasyllables. It lives
from an aesthetically harmonised contradiction between the action of pagan
divinities (who help or hinder the progress of the Portuguese during their epic
maritime voyage to India, which is the book’s theme) and the protection of
Christian feeling and the expansion of faith, breathing life into an ardent
passion for conquering and possessing the world.
Vasco
da Gama is the hero, Venus is the goddess who protects him, and Bacchus is his
feared adversary - but the “Lusitanian people” reach India, offering “new
worlds to the world”, and the poet narrates this remarkable undertaking,
alternating the ardour of enthusiasm and belief with the disillusion caused by
recognising human meanness, “wretched luck, strange condition”.
Written with exemplary narrative mastery, the poem represents a fine example of
the use of the Portuguese language, modern, malleable and rich in its expressive
complexity and exceptional lyrical origins.
