Portuguese literature

[1] The literature of Portugal is distinguished by a wealth and variety of lyric poetry, which has characterized it from the beginning of its language, after the Roman occupation; by its wealth of historical writing documenting Portugal's rulers, conquests, and expansion; by then considered the Golden Age of the Renaissance period of which it forms part of the moral and allegorical Renaissance drama of Gil Vicente, Bernardim Ribeiro, Sá de Miranda and especially the great 16th-century national epic of Luís de Camões, author of the national and epic poem Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads).

The writers of the eighteenth century tried to counteract a certain decadence of the baroque stage by making an effort to recover the level of quality attained during the Golden Age, through the creation of academies and literary Arcadias - it was the time of Neoclassicism.

Literary trends during the twentieth century are represented mainly by Fernando Pessoa, considered one of the greatest national poets together with Camões, and, in later years, by the development of prose fiction, thanks to authors such as António Lobo Antunes and José Saramago, winner of the Nobel prize for Literature.

It has been argued (by great early scholars such as Henry Roseman Lang and Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos) that an indigenous popular poetry existed before the beginning of the written record, although the first datable poems (a handful between around 1200 and 1225) show influences from Provence.

The court poetry of some three hundred knights and gentlemen of the time of Afonso V and John II is contained in the "Cancioneiro Geral", compiled by Resende and inspired by Juan de Mena, Jorge Manrique, and other Spaniards.

The plots are simple, the dialogue spirited, the lyrics often of finished beauty, and while Gil Vicente appeared too early to be a great dramatist, his plays mirror to perfection the types, customs, language, and daily life of all classes.

The playwrights who followed him had neither superior talents nor court patronage and, facing attacks from the classical school for their lack of culture and from the Inquisition for their grossness, they were reduced to entertaining the lower classes at country fairs and festivals.

He was followed by António Ferreira, a superior stylist, by Diogo Bernardes, and Andrade Caminha, but the imitation of classical models by the Quinhentistas came at the cost of spontaneity, with the verse of Frei Agostinho da Cruz being an exception.

The travel literature of the period is too large for detailed mention: Persia, Syria, Abyssinia, Florida, and Brazil were visited and described and Father Lucena compiled a classic life of St. Francis Xavier.

The "Peregrination" of Fernão Mendes Pinto, a typical Conquistador, is worth all the story books put together for its extraordinary adventures told in a vigorous style, full of colour and life, while the "História trágico-marítima", a record of notable shipwrecks between 1552 and 1604, has good specimens of simple anonymous narrative.

The alleged inferiority of seventeenth-century literature to that of the preceding age has been blamed on the new royal absolutism, the Portuguese Inquisition, the Index, and the exaggerated humanism of the Jesuits who directed higher education; nevertheless, had a man of genius appeared he would have overcome all obstacles.

The leading Portuguese playwrights wrote in Spanish, and in the national tongue only poor religious pieces and a witty comedy by D. Francisco Manuel de Mello, "Auto do Fidalgo Aprendiz", were produced.

The discourses and devotional treatises of the Oratorian Manuel Bernardes, who was a recluse, have a calm and sweetness that we miss in the writings of a man of action like Vieira and, while equally rich, are purer models of classic Portuguese prose.

Verney criticized the obsolete educational methods and exposed the literary and scientific decadence in the "Verdadeiro Methodo de Estudar", while the various Academies and Arcadias, wiser than their predecessors, worked for purity of style and diction, and translated the best foreign classics.

The bucolic verse of Quita has the tenderness and simplicity of that of Bernardin Ribeiro, while in the mock-heroic poem, "Hyssope", Cruz e Silva satirizes ecclesiastical jealousies, local types, and the prevailing gallomania with real humour.

The only other Arcadian worthy of mention is Curvo Semedo, but the "Dissidents", a name given to those poets who remained outside the Arcadias, include three men who show independence and a sense of reality, José Anastácio da Cunha, Nicolão Tolentino, and Francisco Manuel de Nascimento, better known as Filinto Elysio.

The first versified in a philosophic and tender strain, the second sketched the custom and follies of the time in quintilhas of abundant wit and realism, the third spent a long life of exile in Paris in reviving the cult of the sixteenth-century poets, purified the language of Gallicisms and enriched it by numerous works, original and translated.

Garção wrote two bright comedies, Quita some stillborn tragedies, and Manuel de Figueredo compiled plays in prose and verse on national subjects, which fill thirteen volumes, but he could not create characters.

In 1865 some young poets led by Antero de Quental, and future president Teófilo Braga, rebelled against the domination over letters which Castilho had assumed, and, under foreign influences, proclaimed the alliance of philosophy with poetry.

Guerra Junqueiro is mainly ironic in the "Morte de D. João", in "Pátria" he evokes and scourges the Braganza kings in some powerful scenes, and in "Os Simples" interprets nature and rural life by the light of a pantheistic imagination.

The reaction against the use of verse for the propaganda of radicalism in religion and politics has succeeded and the most considered poets of the early twentieth century, Correia de Oliveira, and Lopes Vieira, were natural singers with no extraneous purpose to serve.

Anxious to find a national drama, he chose subjects from Portuguese history and, beginning with "An Auto of Gil Vicente", produced a series of prose plays which culminated in "Brother Luiz de Sousa", a masterpiece.

His imitators, Mendes Leal and Pinheiro Chagas, fell victim to ultra-Romanticism, but Fernando Caldeira and Gervásio Lobato wrote lifelike and witty comedies and recently the regional pieces of D. João da Camara have won success, even outside Portugal.

At the present time, with the historical and social plays of Lopes de Mendonça, Júlio Dantas, Marcellino Mesquita, and Eduardo Schwalbach, drama is more flourishing than ever before and Garrett's work has fructified fifty years after his death.

The romance of manners is due to the versatile Camilo Castelo Branco, a rich impressionist who describes to perfection the life of the early part of the century in Amor de Perdição, Novellas do Minho, and other books.

A strong gift of humour distinguishes the As Farpas of Ramalho Ortigão, as well as the work of Fialho d'Almeida and Julio Cesar Machado, and literary criticism had able exponents in Luciano Cordeiro and Moniz Barreto.

After the publication of one volume of verse, he entered with great warmth into the revolt of the young men which dethroned António Feliciano de Castilho, the chief living poet of the elder generation, from his place as dictator over modern Portuguese literature.

His friend Oliveira Martins edited the Sonnets (Porto, 1886), supplying an introductory essay; and an interesting collection of studies on the poet by the leading Portuguese writers appeared in a volume entitled Anthero de Quental.

His most salient characteristics– a disrespect of conventions, both social and literary, an attitude of permanent revolt, playfulness with language, and the use of parody and black humor – are used to form a body of incisive depictions of what it is to be Portuguese and throw light on his relation with the country.

A publicist by profession, he is famous for inventing some of the most ingenious advertising slogans of his time, O’Neill was unusually adept at manipulating words and using them in an efficacious manner, but he refused to put that talent at the service of a lyrically lofty, feel-good sort of poetry (see ‘Simply Expressive’).