The Literature of Portugal

Throughout the great part of its history, the literature of Portugal has been closely linked with that of Spain. This is because until the middle of the twelfth century the two countries were one nation.

The Kingdom of Portugal was recognized as an independent country in 1143. The language that developed in this region was very musical, and the poets of the neighboring Spain used it for their own lyric verse (mainly in love poems). The famous lyrics were called Cantigas de Santa Maria, written by King Alfonso the Wise of Spain (1226-1284), and were set down in the language of Portugal.

The first important lyric poet of Portugal was King Diniz (1261-1325). He wrote at least one hundred and thirty love lyrics and collected those of other poets into anthologies called cancioneiros.

By the fourteenth century, Portuguese writers were producing novels of adventure and stories designed to instruct the reader. One of these, Amadis of Gaul, was one of the world's most famous novels ever written about knights and their ladies. No one knows who its author was or even where it was written. Both Spain and Portugal dispute each other for the honor of its origin.

The most important of the instructive writers of the time was King Duarte (1391-1438). In the Leal conselheiro), he gives an account of his own daily life and habits and an outline of the various social classes he ruled.

The most brilliant period of Portuguese literary history is covered by the reigns of the three kings:

• Dom Joao II (1481-1495)
• Dom Manuel I (1495-1521)
• Dom Joao III (1521-1557)

The first of the distinguished poets of the epoch was Francisco de Sa de Miranda (1485-1558), who started a taste for classical Latin and Greek literature. His poetry has great merit and several of his hymns to the Virgin are very beautiful.

His play Os Estrangeiros (1527) was the first prose comedy composed in Portuguese. Like many poets on both sides of the frontier, he used Spanish when dealing with heroic thoughts and Portuguese when dealing with more gentle or sentimental subjects.

Gil Vicente, the most spontaneous and natural poet of Portugal, wrote a total of forty-four plays, in Spanish, Portuguese or a mixture of the two.

The plays, called autos, sometimes suffer from improbably plots, but their character portraits are excellent.

In his plays we meet symbolic characters, pagan gods, emperors, noblemen, peasants and all the types of men the author saw around him in real life.

Gil Vicente's autos and his methods were taken up and developed by Spanish playwrights.

The period between Dom Joao II and Dom Joao III was also one of the revived interest in the novel, although this type of writing never achieved the same importance in Portugal that it enjoyed in Spain.

Portuguese writers of the time imitated the Spanish rogue, or picaresque, novel as well as the novel of chivalry, such as Amadis of Gaul.

A new series of chivalry began in Portugal with the publication of Palmeirim de Inglaterra (1567) by Francisco de Moraes. In its love affairs, epic deeds, wandering knights, giants, castles, magicians, enchantments and fantastic geography, the tale of Palmeirim differs little from the Spanish novels on which it was based. However, the characters mark Palmeirim de Inglaterra as one of the best in its class.

Another type of novel that developed during this period is called pastoral because the main characters are noble lords and ladies disguised as shepherds. The most important pastoral novel, Diana, was written in Castilian Spanish, although the author, Jorge de Montemayor was Portuguese.

In the Saudades, or as it is more commonly called, Menina e Moca, Bernardim Ribeiro combined the features of the chivalric and the pastoral novels. The book marks the first use in Portuguese of the novel form to discuss the sufferings caused by love. Such matters had usually before been presented only in verse form -- as poetry.

In the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries, there was a great interest in historical writing. This was the time of the Portuguese discoveries and explorations in the Far East, especially in India. Historians such as Joao de Barros and Damiao de Goes faithfully chronicled the sufferings and the triumphs of the nation in its search for empire.

By far, the greatest of all Portuguese writers, so far is Luiz Vaz de Camoes (1524-1580). Camoes was born in Lisbon, in the same year his famous kinsman Vasco de Gama died. While he was still young his family moved to Coimbra, where he began his studies.

At the famous University of Coimbra he wrote his first verse. At the age of twenty, he frequented the court of Dom Joao III, in Lisbon, which had become one of the most important in Europe. Because of a quarrel he was exiled from the court and sent to live away from Lisbon.

He then enlisted in the army and in the campaign of Ceuta, in what is nor Morocco, he lost his right eye.

Back in Lisbon, he wounded a court official in a street quarrel and was sent to prison. When he was released, he set out for three years service as a soldier in India. He was then nearly thirty years old.

He arrived in Goa in 1553, and later took part in many sea battles against the Turks and worked for a time in Macao, the Portuguese island colony that is near Hong Kong today.

On his trip to Goa, the ship was wrecked and Camoes lost all he owned except the manuscript of his famous poem, Os Lusiadas (The Lusiads). There is a legend that he held it up with his left hand while he swam with his right hand.

In 1567 he journeyed to the Portuguese colony of Mozambique in southeast Africa. No longer young, in poor health and penniless, Camoes lived on the charity of his friends until 1569. In that year, he obtained passage home and finally reached Lisbon in 1570 after seventeen years of absence.

He contrived to publish his immortal poem in 1572. For it he was given a small pension by King Sebastian.

During the remainder of his life, he produced no more than a few verses, and at his death in 1580, he had been so thoroughly forgotten by both the court and the world of letters that he was buried in an unmarked grave.

The Lusiads is an epic poem that tells of the struggle of the Portuguese explorer-sailors to reach India. We must bear in mind that at the time of Camoes the discovery of a maritime route to India was of much greater importance than the discovery of new lands by Columbus.

The title of the poem comes from Lusitania, the old name for Portugal, and refers to the entire Portuguese people. The hero is Vasco da Gama, the navigator who had been entrusted by King Manuel I to find the sea route to India.

In The Lusiads, Camoes observed many of the classical rules of composition but stamped the work throughout with his originality. From The things he says about the world of nature, about geography and astronomy and other sciences, we get a very good idea of how learned a man Camoes really was.

The Lusiads has become the national symbol of Portugal, with its hero, Vasco da Gama, representing the entire Lusitanian people.

The domination of Portugal by Spain that began in 1580 had the effect of discouraging Portuguese writers.

The one name that stands out is that of Francisco Manuel de Melo (1608-1666).

Although he wrote attrative poetry in Portuguese, his principal work, Historia de los Movimientos, separacion y guerra de Cataluna (1645), was written in Spanish.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the period of stagnation came to an end. The romantic movement in literature was then sweeping over Europe.

A most important poet, dramatist and critic of the time was João Baptista da Silva Leitão de Almeida Visconde de Almeida Garrett (1799-1854).

Though he was born in Oporto, he spent most of his early life in the Azores. Because of his politics he was forced to leave Portugal.

In France in 1825, he published his poem Camoes, which became famous as a public statement of the aims of the Portuguese romantic movement.

Garrett pioneered in the movement away from the artificial styles of the eighteenth century and toward more natural and spontaneous poetry.

When he was allowed to return to Portugal from exile, he interested himself in the foundation of a national theater.

In 1836, he was appointed inspector general of theaters. The national theater proved a failure, but many of the plays Garrett wrote for it have lasting importance.

One of the best know is Auto de Gil Vicente (1838).

What Garrett had done to reform Portuguese drama and poetry, Alexandre Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo (1810-1877) did for the novel. Herculano was perhaps less important as a writer than as a guide for others. His Lendas e narrativas published in 1851, established the modern historical novel in Portugal.

Camilo Castelo Branco (1826-1890) wrote tragic love stories, including amor de perdicao (1862).

The novels of Julio Diniz (Joaquim Gomes Coelho, 1839-1871) make much of the conflict between love and duty. In Uma familia inglesa (1868) Diniz gives us an excellent picture of middle class life.

Around 1870 a group of young writers began to assert that literature should be closer to real life. Antero Tarquinio de Quental (1842-1891) was one of the most ardent rebels against the romantic movement.

Bom senso e bom gosto (good sense and good taste), a letter he wrote in 1865, became the manifesto of the realistic school.

Joao de Deus Ramos (1830-1896) was much more spontaneous. Out of his own wonderful sense of rhythm he fashioned beautiful verses collected in Camp de flores (1893) and Folhas soltas (1876). The poet Guerra Junqueiro, with his fiery stanzas and satires, helped to overthrow the monarchy and found the Portuguese republic. Junqueiro (1850-1923) was author of A Morte de Dom Joao (1874) and Os simples (1892).

The provisional head of the government that replaced King Manuel in 1910 was Teofilo Braga (1843-1924), another member of the realistic group and one of the best of modern Portugal's poet-critics.

By far the most celebrated novelist of the ninetheenth century Portugal was Eca de Queiroz (1843-1900). In his own day he was Portugal's most popular author, and his books were translated into most European languages. His first important novel, The Crime of Father Amaro (1875), deals with religious intolerance. Cousin Basil (1878) is an excellent picture of life in Lisbon at that time.