Portuguese poetry

"Portugal is a land of poets."This statement is often made by the Portuguese in books, scholarly papers, and discussions of national identity due to the rich past in poetry literature the country has. Although one can name great poets in present days, poetry isn't as favored nowadays as it was in the past.

History

Ancient Portuguese was the language of poetry for most of the Iberian Peninsula (Catalonia excepted) during the 13th century, when troubadour poetry thrived in the royal courts and in Santiago de Compostela, then a huge pilgrimage centre. Alfonso X (1221-1284), King of Castile and León, produced several large histories, assorted treatises and a legal code, all in Spanish, but wrote his poetry – both religious and profane – in Portuguese. Just as curiously, many of the love poems – though composed and sung by men – were from a woman’s point of view.

Great Portuguese Poets

The first great name in Portuguese poetry is Luís de Camões (around 1524-1580). Famous for his epic poem "Os Lusíadas", he also produced a large body of highly original lyric poetry, including over 160 exemplary sonnets. There is, to this day, a strong sonnet tradition in Portugal, with contemporary poets such as
António Franco Alexandre and Vasco Graça Moura applying the centuries-old form to their thoroughly up-to-date concerns.

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) is the great name of modern Portuguese poetry. With his various ‘heteronyms’ (more than mere pseudonyms, since they had ‘biographies’ of their own and wrote in radically different ways from each other and from their inventor), Pessoa was like a one-man generation of poets. His heteronyms even criticized and commented on each other’s work.

Pessoa, whose poetry only became widely available in the 1940s, was not an easy act to follow, and Portuguese poets in the second half of the 20th century went out of their way to experiment with new forms and to explore new thematic territory. The result is an impressive panorama of poetic styles and subjects.

See also

* Galician-Portuguese
* List of Portuguese language poets
* Portuguese language
* Portuguese literature

References

* [http://portugal.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=4634 Portugal - Poetry International Web]