Luís de Camões

Abstract

Luís de Camões (b. 1524?–d. 1579/1580) is the first great Western poet to have lived in Africa and Asia and is now widely considered to be a preeminent literary symbol of the beginnings of the globalized world. Often called the “Prince of Poets” in Renaissance Iberia, he wrote almost exclusively in Portuguese. Even though Portuguese was a language of intercontinental trade, politics, and Christian missionary activity from the 15th century, within Europe it never had a comparable impact. The first English translator of Camões, Richard Fanshawe, had to explain in 1655 that the poet shone as one of the greatest in the world, despite writing in “so uncourted a language as that of Portugal.” Ignorance about Portuguese language and culture in European circles overwhelmed curiosity and appreciation, except during times of greater colonial investment (most recently, anticolonial), given Portuguese people’s pioneering knowledge of other continents. This also explains the comparative lack of academic bibliography about Camões in English and in other widely spoken European languages. The poet became best known internationally for Os Lusíadas, an oft-translated epic understood to be about sea travel, exploration, trade, and empire. His vast and varied body of lyric poetry has received less attention outside of Portugal and Brazil, although its impact was felt on past occasions (Wordsworth’s “Scorn not the Sonnet” and the Brownings are well-known cases). The plays were never given the critical attention of the rest of his work and the small output of prose letters even less so. In all four genres, however, it has become increasingly evident that Camões should not be treated in isolation from the rest of Portuguese literary and intellectual culture, as he used to be. Gil Vicente, Bernardim Ribeiro, Sá de Miranda, João de Barros, Francisco de Holanda, Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcelos, Garcia da Orta, Fernão Mendes Pinto, Aquiles Estaço, Heitor Pinto, António Ferreira, Diogo Bernardes, and Jerónimo Corte-Real are some of the major Portuguese 16th-century authors who share, in one way or another, the same ground with Camões. A growing interest in the poet’s inclusion in the wider world of Iberian and European Renaissance literature has also been felt of late. But this has not prevented recent writing from focusing equally on the poet’s peculiar genius.