Os lusíadas, 450 years later

Abstract

This article gathers information and analysis for interpreting Os lusíadas (1572), by Camões, without naturalizing the romantic criteria that universalize the artistic categories and attentive to the codes of composition of the epic, which are
rhetorical, imitative, prescriptive, turned to a providential conception of time and to a notion of truth that is not dissociated from the mysteries of Christian metaphysics. The explanation of concepts such as “author”, “reader”, “epic”, among others, helps to historicize the contemporary precepts of 16th century poetic production. As the heroic verse is not only
the repository of epigraphs or “illustration” of the historical fact, to be conceived as a document or source, it is necessary to consider what establishes its legibility and touches its context of composition, which took place in the Portuguese
court society from the time of King d. Sebastião. Finally, this text investigates different modes of reception without erasing their cultural differences. This path seeks to demonstrate that the poem condenses the dilemmas of an era and
sustains the plus ultra, the action that defies limits by assuming the global reach of the Portuguese initiative.