Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/578

Rh 556 PORTUGAL [LITERATURE. known to Dom Pedro, brother of A ffonso II. (1211-1223), and a few poems in this style with music attached were written by him. The Roman de End is also quoted by Diniz, but it was through the marriage of John I. with Philippa of Lancaster (13S7) that a knowledge of the Arthurian cycle spread through the Peninsula and led to the popularity of the Propluxics of Merlin and kindred works down to the 16th century. The patriotic pride of the people, which had before found vent in the aravias or tales of contests with the Arabs, sought a new literary expression for the rising national greatness, and the parent of Camoes s great epic is the poem in which Affonso Giraldes celebrates the victory won by the united armies of Portugal and Castile over the Moors at the battle of the Salado (1340). Only a small portion is extant, but it shows considerable vigour and foreshadows the development which national pride was afterwards to take in the Lusiads. Early The revolt against the subjectivism of lyric poetry which appeared prose. in the narrative spirit of the epic showed itself now in another form, and to Affonso IV. belongs the credit of fully appreciating the new tendencies. Acting under his instructions, Vasco de Lobeira (d. 1403) became the author of the first Portuguese novel by turning into prose the romance of Amadis of Gaul, which led the way for a host of imitations bearing a similar title. The historical records of this period are comprised chiefly in the Chronica da Conquista do Algarve, the Livro rclho das Linhagcns, and the Nobiliario do Collegia dos Nobrcs. The theological tendencies of the people are aptly illustrated by works which, although in Latin, deserve men tion. They are the Concordantias Morales and Interprctatio.Mystica by St Anthony of Lisbon (1195-1231), and the writings of Cardinal Alvaro Paes (d. 1353). The most learned scholar, however, of this period was Pedro Hispano, who became Pope John XXI. (d. 1277), and whose universal learning recalled the days of the great schoolmen. Fifteenth loth Century. During this century lyric poetry was under the century, increasing influence of the Spanish school and of its leader Juan de Mena, whose praises were sung in some couplets by the infante Dom Pedro, son of John I. The chief imitators of this style were Luis de Azevedo, Ayres Telles (d. 1515), and Diogo Brandao (d. 1530). The Arthurian romances of Dom Eurives and Branca-Flor maybe referred to this century; and the poems on the death of the infante Dom Pedro by Luis de Azevedo, and on the death of John II. by Diogo Brandao exhibit the literary form of the epic. The constable, son of Dom Pedro, felt the influence of the Italian Renaissance, and consequently became the founder of the Dantesque or allegorical school. His Satyra da felice e in/dice Vida is an allegorical piece of some merit, but a better specimen of this style is the Visdo by Duarte de Brito, a compound of the Roman de la Hose and the Divina Commcdia. The Fingimento de Amore by Fernao Brandao also possesses many beauties. The principal prose works of the time are the Book of the Chase written for John I. (1383-1433), the vivid and interesting Chronicles of Fernao Lopes (1380-1459), the Froissart of Portugal, and the Chronicles of Gomes Eanes de Azurara (d. 1473), Ruy de Pina (1440-1520), and Duarte Galvao (1445-1517). King Edward him self (1433-1438) was the author of The Faithful Councillor and Instructions in Horsemanship, while a Treatise on Tactics with several other works showed the powers of Affonso V. (1438-1481) as a general mathematician and natural philosopher, the cultivation of which may have been in part due to the lessons learned from the Cyropeedia translated for him by Vasco de Lucena. National 16th a,nd 17th Centuries. The golden age of Portuguese literature and had now arrived, and to Bernardim Ribeiro (c. 1500) is due the classical honour of founding its characteristic school of romantic pastoral schools, poetry. The rivers and mountains of his native land are the natural framework of a poet s fancy, and the revival of classical learning showed him in the Eclogues of Virgil a model which he was not slow to imitate. His Eclogues, written in &quot; redondilhas &quot; (octosyllabic nine or ten-lined stanzas), are accordingly the earliest in modern Europe, and, while replete with the charms and conceits of versification of the troubadours, show a truly poetic love of nature. He was also the writer of the first &quot; sextinas &quot; in redondilhas, and of many beautiful cantigas and elegies. To the same school, which was now the representative of all national feeling, belong Christovao Falcao, whose smaller poems are quite equal to those of Ribeiro, Garcia de Resende (1470-1554), compiler of the Cancionciro Gera.l, a magnificent collection of poems by almost three hundred writers, beginning with Affonso Henriques, Gil Vicente (1470-1536), Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos (d. 1585), and Fernao Rodrigues Lobo Soropita (e. 1600). The last-named is chiefly known from three comic satires on the classical school and his Introduction to the poems of Camoens, which formed the basis of Faria e Sousa s Com mentary. Except for the fact that a master-mind belongs to no school, Camoens himself might be claimed by these writers as a fellow- worker, for he was systematically either ignored or abused by the opposing school of classicists. His works are treated of at length elsewhere (see CAMOENS), but it is not out of place to remark here that his beauties are those of the national school and his defects the result of an imitation of the classicisms affected by his opponents. These were the followers of the school founded by Francisco de Sa de Miranda (1495-1558) on his return from Italy, where he acquired a love not only for the Renaissance, whose in fluence had been already felt by Ribeiro, but for the forms in which the new culture found expression. Much praise is due to him for the polish he gave to his country s literature, but by his classical affectations and the favour he showed to the Spanish language, in which his best works were written, he sowed the seeds of that decay which afterwards overtook Portuguese poetry. The eclogues, epistles, odes, elegies, and sonnets of this school are often perfect iu form and contain much real poetry, but the classicisms which at first are graceful in their novelty weary in the end by their unreality, and in the hands of inferior artists degenerate into mere stage properties, used to conceal the want of genius. The shepherds and shepherdesses are no longer the idealized peasants of the troubadours but courtiers in masquerade, and the sense of this lowering of the ideal is sufficient to destroy the pleasure which would otherwise be derived from the polished language and poetic imagination. The imitators of Miranda were very numerous ; the chief among them were Antonio de Ferreira (1528-1569), who was Horatian rather than Virgilian in feeling, and consequently pro duced but inferior eclogues, while his didactic epistles were the earliest Portuguese examples of that style, Diogo Bernard es (d. 1599), whose sacred songs are particularly good, Pedro de Andrade de Caminha (d. 1589), Fernao Alvares do Oriente (b. 1540), Don Manuel de Portugal (d. 1606), and Kstevao Rodrigues de Castro (1559-1637). Among the lyric poets of the 17th century the chief of those who by their satirical and comic verses showed an inclination to the national rather than the classical school were Thomas de Noronha (d. 1651) and Jacinto Freire de Andrade (1597-1657), author of the Fabulas de Narciso and of various songs and sonnets published in the Fenix Rcnascida (1716-1728). Antonio Barbosa Bacellar (1610-1663) was the first writer of &quot;saudades, &quot; and was followed in the same style by Simao Torrezao Coelho (d. 1642). Sonnets were of course written by every man of culture, but they rarely rose above the standard of mediocrity. Those of Manuel de Faria e Sousa (1590-1649), Duarte Ribeiro de Macedo (1618-1680), and Andre Xunes da Sylva (1630-1705) may, however, be reckoned among the best. The sacred poems of the last-named are also very good, but are surpassed by the Jardim do Ceo by Eloi de Sa Soto- inaior, and by the poems of Sister Violante do Ceo (1601-1693). The didactic epistles of Antonio Alvares da Cunha (1626-1690) are fair specimens of this class of poem. The truly heroic life of Portugal during this period naturally Epics demanded to be sung in a fitting strain, and the 16th and 17th 16th centuries were consequently the era of epic poems. The earliest ot l7tli &amp;gt; these was the Crca^do do Homem by Andre Falcao de Resende (d. turk- 1598), which from its similarity in style has been often attributed to Camoens (1524-1579), whose Lusiads appeared in 1572. Though the sole masterpiece of the country and the age, this last not unworthily eclipses other epics in which the brilliant passages are more or less numerous. Such are the Primeiro Cerco dc Diu by Francisco de Andrade (1540-1614), the Naufragio dc Scpulceda and the Scgundo Cerco de Diu by Jeronymo Corte-Real (1540-1593), both rather above the average, the Elcgiada (1588) by Luis Pereira Brandao, the Affonso Africano (1611) by Vasco Mousinho de Quebedo, who shares with Corte-Real the honour of ranking next after Camoens, the Ulyssea by Gabriel Pereira de Castro (1571-1632), the Viriato Trayico by Braz Garcia Mascarenhas (1596-1656), the Malaca Conquistada by Francisco de Sa de Menezes (d. 1664), the Ulyssipo by Antonio de Souza de Macedo (1606-1682), and tin- Dcstmt,i&amp;lt;;do de Ilcspanha (1671) by Andre da Silva Mascarenhas. The drama in Portugal was stifled in its birth. The miracle- Dran plays of the people attained a high degree of excellence in the &quot;autos &quot; or sacred Christmas plays of Gil Vicente (1470-1536), but this writer was born half a century too soon for his work. His comedies, of which the best is Inez Pereira, are full of the rough wit which is found in the early Latin writers, but show a want of polish and dramatic conception which is fatal to their claims to high rank as works of art. The comedies of his contemporaries, Antonio Prestos, Jorge Pinto, and Jeronymo Ribeiro Scares, all show considerable talent, and the Eufrosina of Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos (d. 1585) most nearly approaches to a modern standard of excellence. Francisco Manuel de Mello (1611-1666) was the author in Portuguese of the Auto do Fidalgo Ajircndiz as well as of several poems, but most of his works are in the Spanish language. Among the classicists Miranda was the author of the comedies Os Estrangeiros and Os Filhalpandos, but his plays are inferior to those of Ferreira, whose dramatic works are in some respects superior to his poems. The chief of them, which was produced only a few years later than the Sophonisba of Trissino, is the tragedy Inez dc Castro, but, though his subject was so fine, his treatment of it was not altogether satisfactory. There are also several plays by Camoens ; but the influence of the Spanish language was by this time irresistible, and the result was that all serious dramas were written in Castilian, while Portuguese was reserved only for the lighter and more popular pieces, the best of which were collected