Portuguese Literature Notes (Word)

8/19/2019 Portuguese Literature Notes (Word)

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Portuguese Literature (FC 301)

•Cantigas (Song)

•Amor, Amigo, Escárnio e Maldizer, Santa Maria

•Written in Gallaico-Português

•Cancioneiro da Ajuda

•310 cantigas

•Cantigos de Maldizer

•Often about sex

•Cantos de Amigo

•Voice of a woman

•Leixa-prén

•Cantigas technique

•Taking the second line of the first verse and using it as the first of the second verse

Gil Vicente•14th century Galician Portuguese drops out

•Changes to Castilian

•Portuguese develops from Galician Portuguese

•First King of Portugal

•Dom João I

•Linked to rural classes and rural nobility

•Married an English lady, Philippa of Lancaster

•5 children - Great Generation

•Henry the Navigator

•Royalty in a small country of limited possibilities

•Still needed some serious military experience

•Urged their father to attack small town of Ceuta (Northern Morocco)

•August 1415 conquest of Ceuta - Now part of Spain with the Union of Crowns

•Henry the Navigator

•Associated with the explorations along the west African coast

•Driven by profit - gold, slaves, ivory, spices

•Central figure of Portuguese mythology

•Supported project of overseas expansion

•First people to navigate those waters•With Castille they split up the world

•Wanted to navigate India and China

•1493 split the world East and West

•Potentially because they needed space to travel to South Africa or because they knew Brazil

existed

•1498 Portuguese reach India

•First expedition came back 1499

•First world map 1502

•Palace moves from the top of the hill to by the river

•Has a jetty moving into the river


2/8

•Lower part of palace is a warehouse

•Store for spices, registered and weighed

•Dom Manuel, King, is literally sitting on his spices

•Symbolic

•Nickname - the Fortunate

•Right place at the right time

•Became King in 1495

• Gil Vicente ( 1465-1536 )

•Did not sell his plays for much money, was not massively ambitious

•Wrote some in Castilian others in Portuguese - Bilingual author

•Towering figure of drama, respected stage author in Spain and Portugal

•No other author shared between the two countries

•Saw the creation of the palaces, economy grow, Lisbon become a global city

•Living in a period of prosperity

•There was a goldsmith called Gil Vicente•Commissioned to produce objects of Catholic devotion

•Very detailed

•Made with gold robbed from Sultan king

• The India Play

•First page is comedy, crying not because husband has left but because he is returning

•Armada left in 1506 returns in 1509

•Comedy play

•Begins with a dynamic scene

•Rhyming - increases pace of play

•Short play, half an hour but covers 3 years of time

•Demonstrates how good he is as a playwright

•Adds elements to demonstrate the passage of time

•‘Pasarinho’ legend

•Man hears a bird sing loves it so spends so long that it’s been years without him

realising

•The audience would have known

•Subjective nature of time

•Showing that what feels like a day is really 3 years

•Involvement of audience•Maid whispers to the audience about the wife

•Humour

•She wants sex not to be the house wife that sits alone

•She feels she has a right to sex

•Early 16th Century, devout catholics

•Two sides to play

•Plain adultery

•Legal aspect - contract of marriage

•Late medieval jurisprudence, obligations on both sides

•Right to fulfil the matrimony - have sex together


3/8

•Obligation of the husband to have sex with wife and vice versa

•Household should produce heirs

•Spanish gentleman who is very passionate

•Enters just when Wife is talking about how she is at height of sexuality

•Wife is metaphor for Portugal

•Left by thousands of men on a fleet to India

•She is alone, defenceless, craving for something to happen

•‘I’ll open to you’

•Overt sexual reference

•Spaniard

•‘I’d not leave you for a moment’

•Synonym of conquest

•Sinister

•‘There’s a lion I carry/placed within my heart’

•He is quite violent and dangerous•‘Open up to me, by the body of Christ!’

•Obviously about politics

•Spain wants to take back Portugal (Wife)

•Wife doesn't allow it

•Portuguese squire - Lemos

•Maid sees him as a rascal

•A lot of population believes they are noble

•Nearly 10%

•Poor nobleman

•Also in Spanish literature

•Too honourable to work so poor

•First reaction to husbands return is negative

•Wife lies about how “awful” it was

•Audience then left at the end, went into the street and looked at the real armada

•Sexual imagery

•Ship crossing waters is a reference

•Masts standing upright and flags

•If true end of scene suggests they consume their marriage again

•Public matter is not of adultery•Bigger political picture

•Last moment - take possession of each other again

•Money from husband for Wife

•Sex for husband from Wife

•The reunion at the end was necessary

•Desirable outcome

•King is not mentioned

•Above criticism

• Camões and the apogee of Empire


4/8

•National poet of Portugal

•Most important work is Os Lusíadas

•15th century

•Portuguese developed navigation

•Achievement of technology and engineering

•Muslim community against the Portuguese arrival in India

•Born in Coimbra - University town

•Born in 1524

•Studied at Coimbra - Had a good education

•Petrarchism

•Got involved with a lot of married women

•Came back to Portugal in 1570

•With the manuscripts of the Lusíads

•Immediately recognised as a great piece of literature

•Lusíads printed in 1572•Dom João 3

•Produce stuff that was classical

•Architecture and poetry

•As Lusíadas

•Epos (epic) poem

•Characters don’t change much

•Stand for larger groups

•Story of Vasco da Gama is the story of the Portuguese people in general

•Why the Lusíadas

•Son of Lusos

•Canto 1

•Rome was the original empire

•Glory and then decay

•Aeneas gave the epos of Rome

•Reference to Aeneid would have been very obvious at the time

•Luis de Camões is going to give epos of Portugal

•‘subtle Greek’

•Ulysses

•‘Mars and Neptune bowed’•Portuguese were Kings of war and the seas

•Believes the Portuguese to be so much better than the Romans

•Due to their voyages

•Stanzas 4-5

(See handout for more analysis)

•Bacchus - God of wine

•The character against the Portuguese

•Play starts in media res

•Grabs attention of the reader

•Canto 2


5/8

•Stanza 36

•Venus is trying to convince Jupiter (father) to support Portuguese

•Explicit but beautiful description of Venus

•Height of Camões’ poetic art

•Slightly leaving the traditional epic form

•Canto 9

•Stanza 64

•Reference to the Argonauts

•Stanza 67

•Love and sex reference (hunting)

•Stanza 72

•Close to soft porn

•Not supposed to be read during the time of Salazar

•Carnal desire

•Massive anticlimax to whole book as King disappears in a disastrous battle in Morocco andKing Philippe of Spain takes over Portugal

•Critical voice in Camões is important

• The Peregrinação of Fernão Mendes Pinto

•A man who is lost

•Non sensical nature of his journey

•Opening lines are quite defeatist

•Is it a miserable dog eat dog world or although it is a miserable world God is still looking over

us

•Ironic tone

•Self deprecating in order to captivate his audience

•Personal network was important

•Voyage to India - 1537

•Went directly to Diu

•Chapter 3

•Things start to go wrong again

•Christian renegade

•Was a Christian and then left his faith

•One of the worst things that could happen at the time•Dangerous world for your being as a Christian

•Religious uncertainty at the time

•Unclear boundaries where people switch identities

•Also a physically violent world

•Chapter 5

•They are in the red sea

•Attacked and they lose

•Pento becomes a captive of someone based in Mocha

•Ends with a miserable paragraph

•Entered Mocha as Christian captives


6/8

•Chapter 55

•Take over a Chinese boat and find a precocious child

•The Portuguese Christians roaming the seas are doing things that would be completely

banned in Portugal

•There is a criticism of Christians going around robbing and murdering people

•Said through the mouth of the child

•They find a lone woman in the middle of China

•She is an exemplary human being

•Offers them alms as they are suffering

•She reveals her crucifix to her

•There is a commentary about how he is a true Christian compared to them

•Chapter 112 - Social Welfare in China

•If someone is poor they try to help them

•Fatherless youngsters are taught

•They give work to people that would otherwise be left out•Blind children given jobs in the mill

•Contrasted to these descriptions and what was going on in Europe

•Historians agree that this representation of China is a criticism of society in Portugal

•It praises someone in order to criticise someone else

•Fernão, mentes? Minto…

•Fernão, do you lie? Yes I do…

•A lot of what he wrote is based on the reality of Asia at the time

•Based on a lot of his experiences in Asia

•A lot of it is credible

•Such as knowledge of the languages although some are bullshit

•The Pinto who wrote the book is not the same as the Pinto in the book

•Rebecca Catz

•It can be seen as a book of satire

•An ironic description of the contemporary times and also a ridicule of European society

•She has been criticised for these views

•Pinto’s persona

•Vir bonus

•False ingénu

•Fidei difensor•Pícaro

•Antonio Vieira

•Spent his time in North East of Brazil

•Baroque era

•Lisbon 1608 - Bahia 1697 (Came to Bahia ages 6)

•Father - religious

•Giant of Portuguese literature

•José Saramago considered him a great reference

•Believes people should stick to their places


7/8

•Christian modesty

•Sense of hierarchy

•Communicated in a genre that has gone out of fashion

•Sermons

•He challenges God and through this attempts to rile the audience to take up arms against the

Dutch

•Sermão pelo Bom Sucesso das Armas de Portugal contra as de Holanda - 1640

•“perhaps the most extraordinary discourse ever heard from a Christian pulpit” - Abbé

Raynal

•His father was a mulato

•Had a religious education

•1635 became a priest (Aged 27)

•Well known as a preacher and trouble maker early on

•Became friends with the King of Portugal at the time

•Political plans•Reform of the Empire

•1640 Portugal was part of the Spanish empire and revolted against the Spanish

•Put a new King on the throne Dom João IV

•Camões may have written the Lusiads to persuade the Portuguese to revolt

•Although man of religion, wanted to bring back capital to Portugal

•Inquisition bans hims from preaching so goes to the Pope

•The Sermon of Saint Anthony to the Fish

•Preached in São Luís de Maranhão in 1654

•3 days before embarking secretly for Portugal

•A time of crisis in his life

•Vos estis sal terrae - Matthew 5:13

•Sermon of the Mount

•One time in the New Testament where Jesus expands his doctrine

•Talks about whether the salt is salting the earth or not and whether the earth wants to be

salted or not

•What if the Earth doesn’t want to be salted?

•Turns to Catholic Saint Anthony

•Most popular Catholic Saint in Sri Lanka

•A Portuguese Saint - Born in Lisbon•Not a controversial figure

•When no-one listened he preached to the birds and the fish

•No better audience than fish

•They listen and do not speak

•‘Fish are people who are not going to let themselves be converted’

•Says that we are fish too ‘brethren fish’

•There is an uncertainty to whether we are fish or not

•Preacher enjoys relative authority

•This sermon would cause tension

•Splits sermon into two parts


8/8

•Praises fish in the first part and says whats wrong with them in the second part

•Fish are the only animals that have neither been tamed or domesticated

•Key part of the sermon - IV

•Says all these things but knows that people will not change anyway

•Has the authority as a preacher

•Fish eat fish and not only that but the large fish eat the small fish

•If lots of small fish eat the big fish there would be some sort of justice but as it’s the

other way round there is an injustice

•Lots of small fish have to die for one large fish

•Social critique

•Builds up to the climatic point of the sermon

•Some people will claim that that is the system

•He knows this but says there is another way

•Becoming true Christians

•Concrete picture is Colonial society as well as it’s economy•Cannibalism was part of the legal justification of conquest

•Could rightfully wage war on people if they were cannibals

•Cannibalism was a centre piece of imperialist conquests

•So calling people of the day cannibals is todays equivalent of calling the people

terrorists

•Imperialist ideology of the time

•At the end of the day the power he has is excommunicating people and his words

•He praises God at the end of the sermon

•Claims people are not capable of Grace and Glory so the sermon does not end in Grace

and Glory

•People in the church of that day would be extremely shocked

•Was still printed and circulated and became quite popular

•Fish motif was invented by Pieter Bruegel

•Vieira claims he was brought in front of the inquisition because he took too much inspiration

from a shoemaker prophet called Bandarra

•Claimed that a King that vanished would come back - Sebastianism

•Vieira was aware of the brutality of the African slave trade

•Lets treat the locals better but bring the African slaves over

•Justification is that they still have a better life on the sugar plantations

Portuguese Literature Notes (Word)

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