Poets Patronage And Print In Sixteenth Century Portugal

Portugal was not always the best place for poets in the sixteenth century. Against the backdrop of an expanding empire, the country's annexation by Spain in 1580, and ongoing religious controversy, poets struggled to articulate their worth to rulers and patrons. This did not prevent them, however, from persisting in their craft. Indeed, many of their works reflected precisely on the question of what poetry could do and what, ultimately, its value was. The answers that poets like Luís de Camões, Francisco de Sá de Miranda, António Ferreira, and Diogo Bernardes offered to these questions, and which are explored in this book, ranged from lofty ideals to the more practical concerns of making ends meet when one depended on the whims of the powerful. This volume articulates a 'pragmatics of poetry' that combines literary analysis and book history with methods from sociology (network analysis, sociology of professions, valuation studies) to explore how poets thought about themselves and negotiated the value of their verse in the court, with patrons, or in the marketplace for books. It reveals how poets compared their work to that of lawyers and doctors and tried to set themselves apart as a special group of professionals. It shows how they threatened their patrons as well as flattered them and tried to turn their poetry from a gift into something like a commodity or service that had to be paid for. While poets set out to write in the most ambitious genres and to better their European rivals, they sometimes refused to spend months composing an epic without the prospect of reward. Their books of verse, when printed, were framed as linguistic propaganda as well as objects of material and aesthetic worth at a time when many said that non-devotional poetry was a sinful waste of time. This is a book about the various ways in which poets, metaphorically and more literally, tried to turn poetry and the paper it was written on into gold.

16th century poet Luís Vaz de Camões is widely considered as Portugal's greatest classical poet. Most likely born in Lisbon around 1524, Luís Vaz de Camões received a formal education, possibly from the University of Coimbra. While his family was poor, his heritage was noble and thus Luís Vaz de Camões was able to gain admittance to the court of John III where his career as a poet began. In the 1550s he traveled to the east, passing through the same regions that Vasco da Gama had sailed. It is about this time that he likely began writing his magnum opus, "The Lusiads". First published in 1572, this epic poem, which is frequently compared to Virgil's "Aeneid", relates the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama's discovery of the maritime route to India by way of Cape of Good Hope. Composed of over 1100 stanzas in ten books, "The Lusiads" is to this day widely regarded as the most important literary work of the Portuguese language. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper and follows the translation of William Julius Mickle.

Excerpt from Studies in Portuguese Literature It may be that the Portuguese genius has but little claim to originality. It willingly looks abroad, and delights in novelties and changes. Even mutable Gothic architecture, for instance, was too rigid for the taste of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, and they loaded it with Manueline additions. They assimi late quickly, and, once the impulse given from abroad, they clothe their borrowings in native garb. Thus beneath the alternating influence of France and Italy and Spain, and, more recently, of Germany and England, Portuguese poets have shown that they possess a genuine gift of song and a character of their own. Yet something was lost if much was gained when the Portuguese writers of the sixteenth century turned again to imitate foreign models, and the savour of verdade. N50 aporfieis. Perguntai pouco. Jugay menos. Segui os bons obedecey aos mayores. (g0 with Our Lord. Ever remember Him and who you are. Speak the truth. Be not stiff-necked. Ask few questions. Gamble even less. Follow the good; obey your elders.) His celebrated Guerra de Catalurca has recently been republished by the Real Academia Espafiola from the first edition (lisbon, with intro duction and notes by D. Jacinto Octavio Picon. Madrid, 1912. And his Life, written by Mr. Edgar Prestage, is to appear shortly. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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