Abstract
In the present article, I examine the role of prophecy in Gabriel Pereira de Castro’s Ulisseia (1636) and António de Sousa de Macedo’s Ulissipo (1640), two pre-Restoration epics that center on Odysseus as the mythological founder of Lisbon. In both epics, a prophecy drives the hero to found Lisbon as a precondition for making his nostos to Ithaka while also speaking of a fabled warrior landing at the future site of Lisbon in order to found a great empire. is prophecy echoes others that predict the return of the Encoberto, yet they also tempt Odysseus into forgetting his nostos for the sake of Lisbon’s foundation. Insofar as forgetting one’s nostos is associated with a deathlike state (lêthê) in epic poetry, the parallel between Odysseus and the Encoberto strongly suggests that the imperial enterprise itself is a hazard that leads the hero towards oblivion and death.
Highlights
Built around the literary figure of Odysseus, Gabriel Pereira de Castro’s Ulisseia (1636) and António de Sousa de Macedo’s Ulissipo (1640) work to link the Homeric hero’s alleged foundation of Lisbon to prophecies regarding the Encoberto
Taking the ancient Greek concept of nostos as central to this link, I contend in the present study that by essentially forgetting about Ithaka in both epics, Odysseus places the Encoberto prophecies on shaky ground—even as both poems seek to lend them a measure of credibility
Prophecies about the return of the Encoberto were especially prevalent during the decades preceding the 1640 Restoration, and within Pereira de Castro and Macedo’s epics these prophecies would dovetail with Odysseus’s fraught nostos
Summary
Though a constant in Christianity since Late Antiquity, prophecy acquired new vigor in Portugal in the fifteenth century as the kingdom’s empire grew. Sebastião in the role of Encoberto and as the Last World Emperor or Universal Monarch This is evidenced in three works: Da quinta e última monarquia futura (1597), Discurso da vida do sempre bem vindo, e aparecido rei D. D. Sebastião’s implacable pride cost Portugal its independence and reputation, a change so swift that the kingdom “é hoje a mais vil e deprezada de Europa” (Castro, Vida 127v). Sebastião would wake from his sleep to vanquish the Muslim world and recapture the Levant (Vida 129v-130r). This constant insistence on the king’s imminent awakening in effect turns the present into a cramped antechamber of the future. The Encoberto came to epitomize Portuguese independence from Castilian domination, and it became a precursor for discourse related to the Quinta Monarquia or Quinto Império after the 1640 Restoration
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