PORTUGAL
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PORTUGAL
treatises, and an anonymous scribe told with charming
Tiawele the story of the heroic Nuno Alvares Pereira
in the "Chronica do Condcstavel". The hne of
chroniclers which is one of the boasts of Portuguese
hterature began with Fernao Lopes, who compiled the
chronicles of the reigns of Kings Pedro, Fernando, and
John I. He combined a passion for accurate state-
ment with an especial talent for descriptive writing
and portraiture, and with him a new epoch dawns.
Azurara, who succeeded him in the post of official
chronicler, and wrote the "Chronicle of Guinea" and
chronicles of the African wars, is an equally reliable
historian, whose style is marred by pedantry and
moralizing. His successor, Ruy de Pina, avoids these
defects and, t hough not an artist like Lopes, givesa use-
ful record of the reigns of Kings Duarte, Alfonso V, and
John n. His history of the latter monarch was appro-
priated by the poet Garcia da Resende, who adorned
it, ailding many anecdotes he had learned during his
intimacy with John, and issued it under his own name.
B. Poetry. — The introduction of Italian poetry, especially that of Petrarch, into the peninsula led to a revival of Spanish verse which, owing to the superi- ority of its cultivators, dominated Portugal throughout the fifteenth century. Constable Dom Pedro, friend of Marquis de Santillana, wrote almost entirely in Cas- tilian and is the first representative of the Spanish influence which imported from Italy the love of allegory and reverence for classical antiquity. The court poetry of some three hundred knights and gen- tlemen of the time of Alfonso V and John II is con- tained in the "Cancioneiro Geral", compiled by Resende and inspired by Juan de Mena, Jorge Manrique, and other Spaniards. The subjects of these mostly artificial verses are love and satire. Among the few that reveal special talent and genuine poetical feeling are Resende's lines on the death of D. Ignez de Castro, the "Fingimento de Amores" of Diogo Brandao, and the "Coplas" of D. Pedro. Three names appear in the "Cancioneiro" which were des- tined to create a literary revolution, those of Bernar- din Ribeiro, Gil Vicente, and Sd de Miranda.
IV. Early Sixteenth Century. — A. Pastoral Poetry. — Portuguese pastoral poetry is more natural and sincere than that of other nations because Ribeiro, the founder of the bucolic school, sought inspiration in the national serranilhas, but his eclogues, despite their feeling and rhythmic harmony, are surpassed by the "Crisfal" of Christovao Falcao. These and the eclogues and sententious "Cartas" of Sd de Miranda are written in versos de arte mayor, and the popular medida velha (as the national metre was afterwards called to distinguish it from the Italian endecasyllable), continued to be used by Camoens in his so-called minor works, by Bandarra for his prophecies, and by Gil Vicente.
B. Drama. — Though Gil Vicente did not originate dramatic representations, he is the father of the Por- tuguese stage. Of his forty-four pieces, fourteen are in Portuguese, eleven in Castilian, the remainder bi- lingual, and they consist of autos, or devotional works, tragicomedies, and farces. Beginning in 1502 with religious pieces, conspicuous among them being "Auto da Alma" and the famous trilogy of the "Barcas", he soon introduces the comic and satirical element by way of relief and for moral ends, and, before the close of his career in 1536, has arrived at pure comedy, as in "Ignez Pereira" and the "Floresta de Enganos", and developed the study of character. The plots are sim- ple, 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 su- perior talents nor court patronage and, attacked by the classical school for their lack of culture and by the Inquisition for their grossness, they were reduced to
entertaining the lower class at country fairs and fes-
tivals.
V. The Renaissance produced a pleiad of dis- tinguished poets, historians, critics, antiquaries, theo- logians, and moralists which made the sixteenth century a golden age.
A. Lyric and epic poetry. — S6, de Miranda intro- duced Italian forms of verse and raised the tone of poetry. He was followed by Antonio Ferreira, a superior stylist, by Diogo Bernardes, and Andrade Caminha, but the Quinhentistas tended to lose spon- taneity in their imitation of classical models, though the verse of Frei Agostinho da Cruz is an exception. The genius of Camoens (q. v.) led him to fuse the best elements of the Italian and popular muse, thus creat- ing a new poetry. Imitators arose in the following centuries, but most of their epics are little more than chronicles in verse. They in- clude three by Jeronymo Corte Real, and one each by Pereira Brandao, Fran- cisco deAndrade, Rodriguez Lobo, Pereira de Cas- tro, Sd de Men- ezes, and Garcia de Mascarenhas.
B. The classi- cal plays. — Sa de Miranda en- deavoured also to reform the drama and, shap- ing himself on Italian models, wrote the "Es- trangeiros " . Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcelloshad produced in"FAi- frosina"the first prose play, but the comedies of Sd and Antonio Ferreira are artificial and stillborn productions, though the latter's tragedy, "Ignez de Castro", if dramatically weak, has something of Sophocles in the spirit and form of the verse.
C. Prose. — The best prose work of the sixteenth century is devoted to history and travel. Joao de Barros in his "Decadas", continued by Diogo do Couto, described with masteiy the deeds achieved by the Portuguese in the discovery and conquest of the lands and seas of the Orient. Damiao de Goes, humanist and friend of Erasmus, wrote with rare in- dependence on the reign of King Manuel the Fortu- nate. Bishop Osorio treated of the same subject in Latin, but his interesting "Cartas" are in the vulgar tongue. Among others who dealt with the East are Castanheda, Antonio Galvao, Caspar Corrcia, Bras de Albuquerque, Frei Caspar da Cruz, and Frei Joao dos Santos. The chronicles of the kingdom were con- tinued by Francisco de Andrade and Frei Bernardo da Cruz, and Miguel Leitao de Andrade compiled an interesting volume of "Miscellanea". The travel hterature of the period is too large for detailed men- tion: Persia, Syria, Abyssinia, Florida, and Brazil were visited and described and Father Lucena com- piled a classic life of St. Francis Xavier, but the "Peregrination" of Mendes Pinto, a tj-pical Conquis- tador, is worth all the story books put together for its extraordinary adventures told in a vigorous style, full of colour and life, while the "Historia Tragico- Maritima", a record of notable shipwrecks between 1552 and 1604, has good specimens of simple anony-
