Portuguese literature

_This book was ready in October 1916, but the war delayed its publication. A few alterations have now been made in order to bring it up to date. It is needless to say how welcom...

The Portuguese, a proud and passionate people with a certain love of magnificence and adventure, an Athenian receptivity,[19] an extensive sea-board and vague land-frontiers, na...

the first line of the third distich repeating the second line of the first (and in the same way the first line of the fifth the second line of the third), in _leixa-pren_ (_lais...

[42] Cf. the _leixapren_ and refrain of the _cantiga_ danced and sung at the end of Gil Vicente’s _Romagem de Aggravados_ (_Por Maio era, por Maio_). The parallelism and _leixap...

From the return and enthronement of Afonso III imitation of French and Provençal poetry was in full swing in Portugal. The long sojourn of the prince in France, accompanied by s...

[75] Their antiquarian interest was recognized over three centuries ago. Cf. Argote de Molina, _Nobleza de Andalvzia_ (Seuilla, 1588), f. 151 v.: _es un libro de mucha curiosida...

_Amadis de Gaula_ has indeed been doubly fortunate. The successor of Lancelot, Galahad, and Tristan as a fearless and loyal knight, he early won his way in the Peninsula; he was...

for if this poem is not genuine, and the fact that it was first published by Brito[143] at once lays it open to grave suspicion, it is nevertheless undoubtedly based on popular...

The father of Portuguese history, FERNAM LOPEZ (_c._ 1380-_c._ 1460), had grown up with the generation that succeeded Aljubarrota, and from his earliest years imbibed the nation...

One of the most important early prose works is the _Boosco Delleytoso_ (1515). It consists of 153 short chapters,[196] and is dedicated (on the verso of the frontispiece portray...

The silence that falls on Portuguese poetry after the early _Cancioneiros_ lasts for over a century, scarcely interrupted by the twilight murmurings of the later Galician poets,...

In Portugal a splendid dawn ushered in the sixteenth century. The discovery of the sea route to India, while it gave an impulse to science and literature, also increased religio...

In 1505 King Manuel and his Court in his Lisbon palace had witnessed the first of those _farsas_ in which Gil Vicente has sketched for all time Portuguese life in the first thir...

Clearly the words to him are a sweet music.[292] From one point of view Gil Vicente’s position exactly tallied with Herculano’s description of the _bobo_. He was a Court jester,...

The romantic story of Macias had not been given literary form, but it exercised a wide influence over the Portuguese poets of the sixteenth century. Together perhaps with Diego...

probably refers to some previous effort of his own rather than to the work of Vicente, and Miranda was in Italy when Gil Vicente was taunted by certain _homems de bom saber_ and...

As a poet Manuel de Faria e Sousa, who was something more than a pedant of pedants, deserves a place among the multitude of Portuguese writers of eclogues, since of the twenty l...

BALTHASAR DIAZ, a blind poet (or _jogral_) of Madeira, in the first half of the sixteenth century wrote plays which have retained their popularity. He versified at great length...

For those so fastidious as to be satisfied neither by the popular _autos_ nor the staid classical plays, yet another kind was provided in the shape of Celestina comedies in pros...

The plays of LUIS DE CAMÕES (1524?-80) are in a sense typical of his genius, for they show him combining two great currents of poetry, the old indigenous and the classic new. A...

Many of Camões’ friends were also lyric poets, but their poems have mostly vanished. One of them, Luis Franco Corrêa, compiled a _cancioneiro_ of contemporary poems which still...

LOURENÇO DE CACERES, in his _Doutrina_ addressed to the Infante Luis in twenty short chapters on the parts of a good prince, showed that he could write excellent prose. His deat...

MANUEL DE ABREU MOUSINHO wrote in Spanish a brief account of the conquest of Pegu by Salvador Ribeiro de Sousa, of which a Portuguese version appeared in the 1711 edition of Men...

Scarcely less celebrated than Goes, the archaeologist LUCIO ANDRÉ DE RESENDE (1493?-1573),[501] friend of Goes, Clenardus, and Erasmus, left the Dominican convent of Bemfica, in...

One of the causes that most moved Portugal to curiosity and acted as an incentive to discovery were the vague rumours of the existence of a mighty Christian prince, the half-myt...

In the preface (1570) to his _Regra Geral_, written in 1565, GONÇALO FERNANDEZ TRANCOSO[536] (_c._ 1515-_c._ 1590) professed not to have sufficient literary skill even for this...

A faint vein of mysticism is to be found in the work of FREI HEITOR PINTO (_c._ 1528-1584?), who was born at the high-lying little town of Covilhan and professed in the famous C...

FREI LUIS DOS ANJOS (_c._ 1570-1625) in his _Iardim de Portugal_ (1626) gathered edifying anecdotes of saintly women from various writers, and set them down in good Portuguese p...

The taste in poetry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is seen in two collections, partly Spanish, partly Portuguese: _Fenix Renascida_ (5 vols., 1716-28) and _Eccos qu...

The great prose-writer of the century, ANTONIO VIEIRA (1608-97), was born in the same year and city as D. Francisco Manuel de Mello and spent a life as unquiet. He was not liter...

Like the less celebrated poet son of an Alentejan painter, JOSÉ ANASTASIO DA CUNHA (1744-87), artillery officer, mathematician, Professor of Geometry at Coimbra, who translated...

The best-known work of the learned son of a Lisbon blacksmith who became the first Bishop of Beja and Archbishop of Evora, MANUEL DO CENACULO VILLAS-BOAS (1724-1814), is his _Cu...

While scientific research work was accumulating the bones of history a creator arose in the person of ALEXANDRE HERCULANO (1810-77). He had emigrated to France and England in 18...

[656] The name of the first Earl of Desmond (cr. 1328) was Maurice fitzThomas (†135) not Gerald, Gerod, Gerott, Garrett, or Garrt (see Lord Walter FitzGerald, _Notes on the Fitz...

It is perhaps a relief to turn to the prose plays, _O Azebre_ (1909, written in 1904), the interest of which centres in the artist Fidelio, _Nó Cego_ (1904), dealing with divorc...

Snr. MANUEL TEIXEIRA GOMES, versatile and gifted, traveller, diplomatist (Portuguese Minister at the Court of St. James), and author, is essentially an artist. With a clear, col...

It might be said of that marvellous poet Victor Hugo that he is not for exportation: the tendency has been for those who lack his genius to take shelter in his defects. Since on...

The popular appetite for _autos_, simple Christmas plays, legends of saints, and for long vague _romances_ never flagged, and some of the literature written to satisfy it, by Ba...

[721] Fernam Rodriguez Lobo Soropita, speaking of the _noites privilegiadas_--the eves of New Year and Epiphany--refers to _os villões ruins que essas noutes vos perseguem_ and...

The ancient _muiñeira_ rhythm continues, and the parallel-strophed songs of the early _Cancioneiros_ have their echoes in the anonymous poetry of to-day. It is, indeed, of inter...

Manuel I, 88, 89, 96, 101, 103, 107, 110, 111, 112, 115, 117, 118, 120, 121, 126, 129, 133, 145, 175, 192, 200, 201, 202, 208, 209, 211, 214, 221, 228, 295, 312.

Vicente (Gil), 13, 16, 19, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 62, 74, 75, 97, 102, 105, 106-31, 132, 133, 138, 139, 141, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164, 166, 167, 178, 235, 271, 291, 3...