O selvagem africano, o falso mouro e o exótico gentio: Imagens dos orientais n’«Os lusíadas» e no presente

Abstract

Using as its background the celebration of the 450 years since the publication of The Lusiads by Luís Vaz de Camões and the several discourses which have originated in the media around those same celebrations, this paper aims at analysing the contribution of this work for the shaping and development of Orientalist discourse in Portugal. I begin by listing the terms that Camões used to refer to Africans, Middle Easterners and Indians and then I compare them with modern media representations of the same peoples. I conclude that, despite the temporal difference, modern representations are defined by continuity and similarity rather than by rupture and difference. In the final section, I try to assess the different memories regarding Camões and his work as well as the history of Portugal and of the African and Asian people in the contemporary world.