Portuguese literature

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Portuguese literature , in the broadest sense, refers to literature written in Portuguese . This essentially includes the literature of Portugal , but also that of Brazil , Angola and Mozambique , as well as the other Portuguese-speaking countries . Literature, but above all lyric poetry, is the most important genre of art in Portugal and the only one that has achieved real world renown. This article covers the literature of Portugal. For Brazilian authors, see Brazilian Literature .

middle Ages

Trovadores - Cancioneiro da Ajuda (13th century)

Medieval Portuguese literature was influenced by ancient Provencal literature, which had the most highly developed literary tradition at that time. In the 13th century, literary works in Galician-Portuguese , the common precursor of modern Portuguese and Galician , were created in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula .

poetry

Poems were created based on the example of the trobadord poetry in southern France , which can be divided into the following main genres:

  • cantigas de amor : the lyrical self is a man who loves an unreachable woman and expresses the pain about it in the poems
  • cantigas de amigo : the lyrical I is a woman who sings of her grief over the absence of her lover and her longing for him
  • cantigas de escárnio satirically mock a person without naming them directly
  • cantigas de maldizer like cantigas de escárnio , only much more direct, sometimes with swear words
  • cantigas de Santa Maria are poems of praise to Mary, in which her miracles are praised. The most famous writer of such poems was the King of Castile and León Alfonso the Wise (1221–1284).
Cantigas de Amor by Martim Codax

The poems were copied from the end of the 13th century and collected in so-called cancioneiros . Three of these collections of poetry have survived to this day: Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Vaticana (15th century, 1205 cantigas, now in the Vatican ), Cancioneiro Colloci-Brancutti (15th century, 1664 cantigas, in the Portuguese National Library in Lisbon ) and the Cancioneiro da Ajuda (13th century, 310 cantigas de amor, in the Biblioteca da Ajuda in Lisbon).

In addition, King Dionysius of Portugal (1279–1325) is considered to be an important poet of the era, and many of his poems have survived.

Epic

Medieval Portuguese literature contributed to subjects that were common throughout Europe. Above all, this included the legend of the Holy Grail as part of the Arthurian legend . O livro de José de Arimateia (13th century) tells the story of Joseph of Arimathea who, after the burial of Christ, brings the Grail from Palestine to England, where he is to remain for an indefinite period. In the Demanda do Santo Graal (also 13th century) the knights of the round table set out to find the grail.

Religious literature

The most important surviving document of religious and ethical character is O Horto do Esposo (The Groom's Garden). It is a collection of edifying tales in which Christ is portrayed as the bridegroom in paradise, with whom the believer's soul is married. The collection contains fables , legends and accounts of miracles for the conversion of the unbelievers. The stories convey lessons for their own actions in narrative form. In addition, some saints' lives as well as stories of miracles and martyrs have been preserved.

Historiography

Portuguese historiography developed in the 15th century. The historian Fernão Lopes (~ 1380–1460) in particular integrated the already existing Crónica Geral de Espanha (1344) and so-called Livros de Linhagem (between 1270–1345, epic-mythical stories about historical people) into his Crónica Geral do Reino de Portugal (General Chronicle of royalty Portugal), he the reign I. Dom Pedro , Dom Fernando I. and Dom João I. Advanced.

Noble literature

In the vicinity of Königshofen, works were created that served to pass on practical information: The Livro de Falcoaria (book of falconry ) and the Livro da Montaria (book of driven hunt) deal with hunting, the Ensinança de Bem Cavalgar Toda Sela (instruction, every saddle probably to ride) the art of riding. The Leal Conselheiro (Loyal Counselor) is a kind of manual for nobles. O Livro da Virtuosa Benfeitoria (Book of Virtuous Beneficence) is a political theory about the role of the king. All of these works were created during the reigns of Dom Joãos I (1383–1433) and Dom Duartes (1433–1438), who may have commissioned the works.

Humanism and renaissance

Luís de Camoes

The national poet Luís de Camões (1524 / 25–1579 / 80) wrote the epic Os Lusíadas in 1572 , in which he glorified the Portuguese voyages of discovery in lyrical form. The Instituto Camões was named after him, which - comparable to the Goethe-Institut - promotes the Portuguese language and culture worldwide.

The poet Francisco de Sá de Miranda (1485–1558) was strongly influenced by Italian influences during his stays in Italy. His work left a lasting mark on Portuguese poetry. He also wrote plays.

A number of other authors made the Renaissance in Portugal the so-called "Golden Age" of Portuguese literature and culture:

Religious prose and poetry

Religious literature in Catholic Portugal primarily reached its heyday in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, epochs when the influence of the Church was immense and when the crown held its hand protectively over the clergy . Numerous clergymen - clerics, priests, nuns, monks - were active in literature. There was a spiritual prose that dealt mainly with biblical topics, and important intendants were Amador Arrais and Tome de Jesus . Spiritual poetry was also very popular. Religious such as the monks Agostinho da Cruz and Frei Jerónimo Baía, as well as the nuns Violante do Céu , Maria do Ceu and Maria Magdalena da Gloria are the most important representatives of the spiritual poetry of the Renaissance. This tradition lasted until the end of the twentieth century, when Daniel Faria was still an ardent representative of this genre.

Baroque and Enlightenment

The Baroque is mainly represented by one man - Father António Vieira , whose sermons (Sermões) are among the most valuable of Portuguese prose and he is also the most important representative of Portuguese Baroque. In addition, the poets Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage , António Barbosa Bacelar and Francisco Rodrigues Lobo are important .

The love letters of the Portuguese nun Mariana Alcoforado , which - we know today - did not come from her, were addressed to a French officer and are still among the most beautiful love letters in world literature , also fall during this period .

The third important author was Francisco Manuel de Melo (1608–1666), who wrote mainly in Spanish and was one of the most important writers in Portugal of the 17th century.

The only real enlightener in Portugal was Luís António Verney , who caused a sensation as a theologian, especially in Portugal, with his philosophical, scientific and didactic treatises. Another author attributed to the Portuguese Enlightenment was the travel writer Francisco Xavier de Oliveira , who lives in England .

romance

Alexandre Herculano is widely regarded as the founder of Portuguese literary romanticism. His work is of immense importance in understanding Portugal's earlier epochs. Almeida Garrett was the country's second great romantic. The work of Almeida Garrett was of eminent, even European importance for the theater of the Romantic period. Never before, since the Renaissance or after, had Portuguese theater gained so much importance outside the country. Another romantic poet was Antonio Augusto Soares de Passos .

Realism, positivism, nationalism: the generation of 1870

The work of Camilo Castelo Branco (1825–1890) is situated somewhere between romanticism and realism . With 58 novels, he was the most important novelist that Portugal had produced up to the publication of Eca de Queiros. His life was as eccentric as his work. His Gothic Tales Mistérios de Lisboa (1854) were filmed in 2010 (“ The Secrets of Lisbon ”).

In the 1860s and 1870s, a student association was formed in Coimbra in opposition to Romanticism, which aimed at a cultural renewal of Portugal. A similar group later formed in Lisbon, the “Cenáculo”. Under the rule of Dom Luis I , a strong republican tendency grew stronger for the first time, which also called for political renewal. This Geração de 70 included Antero de Quental (1842-1891) and the later murdered writer and scholar Manuel Joaquim Pinheiro Chagas (1842-1895), who founded Portuguese realism and whose monumental work was also important for Portuguese positivism of the time.

Eça de Queiroz

The most important representative of Portuguese realism and the generation from 1970 is José Maria Eça de Queiroz (1845–1900). The author, who was heavily influenced by French literature, criticized the social circumstances of his time and achieved world fame with his novel O primo Basílio . Abílio de Guerra Junqueiro (1850-1923) was known as a writer of nationalistic-anti-British poetry. Joaquim Pedro de Oliveira Martins (1845-1894) spoke about social issues . Ramalho Ortigão (1836-1915) wrote the first Portuguese detective novel.

The officer and diplomat Abel Botelho was also a well-known writer. His naturalistic work depicts the situation of the poor and those outcasts from society. His novel "O Barao de Lavos" (1891) was the first work in modern European literature that openly dealt with homosexuality; the template was probably a social scandal from 1881.

Symbolists and Parnassians

The founder of symbolism (literature) in Portugal was the poet and scholar Eugénio de Castro e Almeida , another representative of the poet and "Portuguese Baudelaire " Gomes Leal (1848–1921). The partly decadent, partly aristocratic Parnassia ( João Penha , António Feijó , Cesário Verde ) are considered to be the forerunners of Portuguese modernism .

Pre-Modern Literature (Late Nineteenth Century to 1930s)

Homeland and travel literature

Raul Brandão (1867–1930) was the chronicler of old Portugal, who primarily portrayed fishermen and farm workers from the Azores in his books and thus created a memory for them. Aquilino Ribeiro (1885–1963), a well-traveled citizen of the world, created a work with homeland references that dealt with the nature and landscape of his country. José Maria Ferreira de Castro (1898–1974) was primarily a travel writer. He processed his sometimes devastating experiences in Brazil into novels and stories. His works already mark the proximity to later neorealism ( A selva , 1930, German Die Kautschukzapfer , 1933), but the local color is more pronounced. Florbela Espanca (1894–1930) was a melancholy poet; her work is comparable to that of Sa-Carneiro. Her latent grief also suggests the Saudade.

Saudosismo

Title page of No. 4 (1912) by A Águia , the organ of the Renascença Portuguesa

In Portuguese literary history, saudosismo denotes a movement for the renewal of Portuguese poetry as well as of the Portuguese nation ( Renascença Portuguesa ). The association founded in Porto in 1912 came about as a reaction to the establishment of the republic in 1910 and the associated feeling of demoralization; their work reached a climax in the second decade of the 20th century. Her magazine A Águia ("The Eagle") existed from 1912 to 1932.

The movement's works were characterized by a melancholy style typical of Portugal, which bears mystical-pantheistic traits. The term is derived from the Portuguese saudade , which can only be roughly translated as longing, melancholy.

Its most important representative was Teixeira de Pascoaes (1877–1952), another the philosopher Leonardo Coimbra (1883–1936). Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935), who after Luís de Camões was considered the most important poet in Portugal, was also a follower of this direction for a while.

Integralism and Fascism

It was primarily three poets who were first celebrated as important poets by Catholic integralism , which was oriented towards monarchy and corporate state, and later also by fascism : António Sardinha , who died young, promoter of racist theories and also a politician, Afonso Lopes Vieira , a representative of the conservative Revolution and author of folk poems, and the poet António Correia de Oliveira , who became a kind of official poet of the Estado Novo .

Modern

First modernismo

In Portuguese literature, a distinction is made between the times of the first and second Modernismo . The first modernism was the attempt, characterized by symbolism , to distance oneself from the traditional and outdated traditions of Portuguese literature and culture, and led, especially in poetry, to a connection with the European avant-garde. Important representatives were Fernando Pessoa , who left 30,000 flies behind when he died, which he wanted to publish as a book, but which did not appear until 1982, as well as Mário de Sá-Carneiro and José Sobral de Almada Negreiros , here in his capacity as writers. The Orpheu magazine , published by the authors of Modernismo , of which only two issues appeared, caused a scandal because of its avant-garde character. The time of the first Modernismo is to be set from 1914 to around 1930.

Fernando Pessoa (around 1915)
Second modernismo

Pessoa's successors founded a powerful instrument in 1929, the literary magazine " Presença ", which was the mouthpiece of this movement of presencismo . Important authors were João Gaspar Simões , José Régio , Miguel Torga and Branquinho da Fonseca . Characteristic were the emphasis on individuality and the pronounced L'art pour l'art attitude of the poet. Its sensitivity and intelligence should be expressed in the work of art. This second stage of Modernismo fell between 1930 and around 1945.

Neorrealismo

As early as the 1930s, a strong countercurrent to aesthetic presencismo developed under the dictatorship . From the beginning it was influenced by the Brazilian novel of the Northeast, a literature that focused on the determination of people by their living conditions. One of the first works in this direction is the novel Gaibéus (1939) by Alves Redol , who was indifferent to aesthetic questions. The neorealists published novels about the lives of workers, farm workers and fishermen, in which dialect was also processed. They discussed their views in several newspapers, some of which were banned by censorship. They included Manuel da Fonseca , Carlos de Oliveira and Fernando Namora .

surrealism

Various poets also tried their hand at surrealism. So here were Alexandre O'Neill , Mário Cesariny . Jorge de Sena (1919–1978), who emigrated to Brazil and the USA, and Ruben Alfredo Andresen Leitão (1920–1975) were the most important representatives.

Storytellers and novelists

The 1950s and 1960s produced great storytellers: Carlos de Oliveira continued his neorealist work with Uma Abelha na Chuva ("A Bee in the Rain", 1953). Miguel Torga, a doctor from the north of Portugal who fell silent in the 1940s, also wrote A criacao do mundo ("The creation of the world"), one of the great stories about the period (s) of a life from the 1920s to in the 1980s. Agustina Bessa-Luís , next to Lidia Jorge the most important female voice in her country in the 20th century, was able to look back on a large number of publications, especially novels, short stories, plays and screenplays made into films.

Poetry

The main genre of Portuguese literature and art is poetry. Portugal has produced countless poets. Some modern ones were also known beyond the borders of the country. For example António Botto (1897–1959), who was one of the few authors and celebrities in Portugal through his open admission of his homosexuality, who publicly confessed and thus got into trouble. Eugénio de Andrade (1923–2005), awarded the Prémio Camões , 2001, was also read in Germany and is considered one of the most important Portuguese poets of the 20th century.

The universe of António Gedeão

The poet António Gedeão is an exception in modern Portuguese literature. As a military technician and science historian, he wrote countless non-fiction and popular science and natural science-didactic writings on his subject, which are unique in their scope and popularity in Portugal. As a poet, he began writing verses at the age of five and wrote a drama about Vasco da Gama at the age of eleven, which has only survived in fragments. Poems on scientific subjects were added later. He is often compared to Fernando Pessoa. Gedeão is an extraordinary figure in Portuguese literature as it did not exist before or after him. His scientific reflections can best be captured in the poem “ Aurea Borealis ” (Northern Lights).

Postmodern and Present

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andersen

José Saramago

One of the most important Portuguese writers in the second half of the 20th century was José Saramago (1922–2010). The trained auto mechanic, who came from a poor background, acquired extensive knowledge of literature through his autodidactic skills, which led him to devote himself entirely to writing from 1976 onwards. Saramago achieved its national breakthrough in 1980 with the socially critical novel Levantando do chão (Hope in the Alentejo). Since then, the avowed atheist and communist has written numerous poems, short stories, novels and dramas in which he portrays the history and society of Portugal from the perspective of the common people in a powerful, sometimes surrealistic narrative. His 1991 novel O Evangelio Segundo Jesus Cristo (The Gospel According to Jesus Christ) aroused the displeasure of the Catholic Church due to alleged blasphemy , which led to Saramago's nomination for the European Culture Prize being withdrawn by the Portuguese government. Saramago then emigrated to Spain in protest. His work has received several awards. In 1995 he received the highest prize for Portuguese-language literature ( Prémio Camões ) and in 1998 the Nobel Prize for Literature .

Antonio Lobo Antunes

Antonio Lobo Antunes

António Lobo Antunes (* 1942) is a contemporary Portuguese novelist. The medical student worked as a military doctor in Angola during the final phase of the war of independence . After returning to Portugal, he worked as a psychiatrist. He processed his experiences during the war in the novel Os Cus de Judas (The Kiss of Judas), with which he made his breakthrough as a writer in Portugal in 1979. Today Antunes lives and works as an author in Lisbon. In his novels he addresses the history of Portugal, always focusing on the fate of normal people. His work has won numerous prizes, including the 2007 Prémio Camões , Portugal's most important literary prize. Antunes is considered a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature .

Goncalo M. Tavares

Gonçalo M. Tavares has been known to a wide audience in Germany since 2012 . He went on a reading tour and another book of his was translated into German. He is therefore considered the legitimate successor to Saramago and Antunes and is certainly one of the great contemporary storytellers from Portugal. Tavares is the most important Portuguese writer of his generation.

Most important genres and styles

The most important literary genre in Portugal is poetry. It is said that in Portugal every citizen writes at least one poem once in their life. Poetry is also often used for songs and lyrics by fados and has a fairly high status even in the ordinary Portuguese population because it is memorized. The "Cancioneiros" (song books) of the late Middle Ages already show how important the poetry was, in part for simple courtiers, which was collected in anthology-like books. Drama or drama has always had various heydays and is associated with the names of great authors. Is the second most important genre of Portuguese literature. The prose used to have the main meaning in the legends of saints and chronicles of the courts and the monarchy. Novels were mostly in the area of ​​chivalric literature. Portuguese novelists did not achieve their first international success until the end of the 19th century. After that there were always individual novelists who achieved world renown (Saramago, Lobo Antunes).

What is important for Portugal is a special kind of non-fiction book, which stands between essay writing and philosophy and cannot be assigned to any clear genre: many texts are highly scientific, theological, philosophical, anthropological, but do not fall into the classical genres or are still not recognized as these . Examples of this type of literature are the works of Teixeira de Pascoaes or the prosaic works of Fernando Pessoa . Travel literature (Fernao Mendes Pinto, António Tenreiro , Bernardo Gomes de Brito and others) also gained importance .

Portuguese authors in relation to Germany

Many Portuguese authors have been translated into various languages, including German. With their work they had an influence on German writers:

  • Luís de Camões , whose epic Die Lusiaden was first published in German in 1810 and has been translated and reprinted in various ways from the 19th century to the present day. Numerous German, especially romantic, poets read the Lusiads or even wrote a poem about the author, for example Bürger , Schlegel , Fichte etc. The Lusiads have since been part of the educated citizen . August von Platen is said to have even learned Portuguese in order to be able to read the Lusiaden in the original.
  • Fernao Mendes Pinto : his work, the “Peregrinacao”, translated as “Wonderful journey into distant Asia”, was translated into German and other languages ​​as early as the 17th century and has seen many editions since then. The work was important as a description of the manners, customs and geographical conditions of the countries he visited and was very popular with readers interested in adventure.
  • José Maria Eça de Queiroz, who was also known as the "Portuguese Zola " as a novelist , was the first novelist who was almost completely translated into German with his oeuvre. Friedrich Nietzsche read it and valued it highly. His work "Vetter Basilio" was the first Portuguese literature ever to be made into a film in Germany, in 1969 as a television play directed by W. Semmelroth.
  • Fernando Pessoa : Portugal's most important writer of the 20th century has a large fan base in Latin America and southern Europe. World-famous authors such as Jorge Luis Borges , Octavio Paz and Antonio Tabucchi dealt with him. In Germany, Pessoa became known through the documentary "Fernando Pessoa- Im Labyrinth des Ich" from 1987, which incidentally was the first portrait of a Portuguese documented in Germany. His entire work has been translated into German and has a large fan base in Germany too.
  • Aquilino Ribeiro was a writer known only in Portugal. With his travel diary, which he wrote about a trip through Germany in the 1920s, he had a lasting impact on the image of Germany in Portugal. His work is a book that describes the events from the perspective of a Portuguese at a time when the two countries did not yet have extensive contacts with each other.

The contemporary authors António Lobo Antunes , José Saramago and Lídia Jorge, among others, are well known to the German public through numerous readings by authors, newspaper articles and translations.

The Portuguese theater

The Portuguese theater ( Teatro Portugues ) encompasses the theater industry in Portugal. The theater is at least as important to the public as Portuguese film , especially since its tradition is very long and some playwrights and plays have made it world famous. Gil Vicente is considered the founder of Portuguese theater .

The beginnings and high points of the "golden age" of Portuguese theater lie in the Renaissance and coincide with the "golden age" of literature there. Important works of Renaissance theater were created from around 1500 to 1600, but many were banned by the Inquisition and could only be performed in later epochs. The second great epoch of Portuguese theater was the time of the Portuguese Romanticism , in which other important plays were created.

Eminent playwrights

Renaissance (Golden Age of Portuguese Theater):

Baroque

romance

Other important playwrights

World-renowned dramatist

  • Gil Vicente
  • Almeida Garrett

Significant pieces

Major literary magazines from Portugal

Literary theory, terms from purely Portuguese literary history

literature

  • Harri Meier, Ray-Güde Mertin: The Portuguese literature. In: Kindler's new literary lexicon. Vol. 20. Munich 1996, pp. 66-77.
  • João Barrento: Carnations and Immortelles. Portuguese contemporary literature. Berlin: edition tranvía, 1999. ISBN 3-925867-42-2 .
  • Ilse Losa, Egito Gonçalves: Explorations. 30 Portuguese storytellers. Berlin 1973.
  • Ilídio Rocha: Chronological Lexicon of Portuguese Literature. After the Pequeno Roteiro da Literatura Portuguesa. Lisbon, 1984, updated and revised by Ilídio Rocha, Frankfurt am Main: TFM (Teo Ferrer de Mesquita publishing house), 1999. ISBN 3-925203-62-1 .
  • Giuseppe Carlo Rossi - History of Portuguese Literature . (Tubingen, 1964).
  • Helmut Siepmann: A short history of Portuguese literature. (Beck'sche Reihe, 1547) Munich: CH Beck, 2003. ISBN 3-406-49476-5 .
  • Helmut Siepmann: Portuguese literature of the 19th and 20th centuries in outline. Darmstadt: Scientific Book Society, ²1995. ISBN 3-534-08794-1 .
  • Portuguese Literature , ed. v. Henry Thorau. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1997. ISBN 3-518-40946-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Lusiads . 1800-1882. Retrieved August 31, 2013.
  2. ^ Margarida Viera Mendes: The Baroque in Portugal. in: Miguel Tamen, Helena Buescu (Ed.): A revisionary history of Portuguese literature. Garland, London / New York 1999, ISBN 0-8153-3248-3 , pp. 58-78, here p. 66
  3. ↑ Meier, Mertin 1996, p. 74.
  4. ↑ Meier, Mertin 1996, p. 75.