Literary Styles: From Troubadours to Classicism
Literary Styles and Movements
Alliteration: Repetition of a consonant phoneme (e.g., Brancas bacanthus b and b or badas eijam).
Assonance: The repetition of similar vowel sounds in stressed syllables (e.g., train to lves s, brances, forma class).
Paronomasia: The approximation of words in a text due to their similarity in sound, whether in form or not.
Parallelism: Repetition of ideas and words that correspond in meaning (e.g., But it is necessary to have strength, it is necessary to have race, it is necessary to have money always).
Theatrical Text
Issues that constitute a theatrical text: The theatrical text, meanwhile, waives the narrator. In the theater, the story is not told to us, but “shown” by the characters, who are brought to life by the actors. The characters, therefore, constitute the totality of the theatrical text: nothing exists without them or by means of them.
Direct speech: When the characters’ words are literally reproduced.
Indirect speech: When the narrator conveys the characters’ words in their own words.
Troubadours and Medieval Poetry
Troubadours: The Troubadour literary manifestation is the first of the Portuguese language. Its emergence occurs in Portugal when the nation begins to emerge as independent, in the 12th century. However, its origins are in Provence, from where it spread throughout almost all of Europe. Despite this, the medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric has its own features, great productivity, and a considerable number of preserved authors.
Cantiga de Amigo
- Feminine lyrical “I” resulting from the psychological travesty of the troubadour: the woman “speaks” regretting the absence of her friend.
- Use of oral Portuguese with musical accompaniment for song and dance.
- Constant parallelism has roots in the Iberian Peninsula’s own tradition, in its rural and popular festivals, in its music and dance, in which vestiges of Arab culture abound.
- Rural setting, simple language and structure. The most frequent theme is the loving regret of a girl whose boyfriend has left for war against the Arabs.
Cantiga de Amor
- Masculine lyrical “I”: the troubadour lover laments the indifference of his love.
- Use of formal Portuguese and monotony of composition.
- Little parallelism.
- Roots in Provençal poetry, in the refined environments of French courts and aristocratic circles. Therefore, it is linked to certain conventions of language and feeling.
Mocking Songs
Indirect and veiled criticism, the identity of the target remained somewhat in the shadows.
Cantiga de Maldizer
Nominal and direct attack, in runaway language.
Epilogue: Means the end of a literary work, or the last act of a play, (figurative) conclusion; date; end.
Literary Production in Colonial Brazil
16th century: The metropolis sought to guarantee control over the land, organizing hereditary captaincies and sending blacks and Jesuits from Africa to Europe to catechize the Indians.
17th century: The city of Salvador, Bahia, populated by Portuguese adventurers, Indians, blacks, and mulattos, became the center of trade and sugar policies.
18th century: The region of Minas Gerais became the center of gold exploration and the first political revolts against Portuguese colonization, among which the Inconfidência Mineira (1789) stood out.
Palaciana Poetry
Palaciana Poetry: Palaciana poetry was troubadour-like, with its verses sung, accompanied by music, and generally monotonous and repetitive in tone. It was called “Palaciana” because it was made by nobles and presented only in palaces. The language used was easy and accessible to all. The poets placed their critical views in their work. The predominant theme was sentimental lyricism, subtle and sophisticated, singing of women as extremely idealized. It was presented in lines of 7 syllables (redondilha maior) and 5 syllables (redondilha menor).
Historiographical Poetry
Historiographical Poetry: These works focus on historical chronicles of events in Portugal. The main chronicler was Fernão Lopes, who was the first historian to attach importance to the Portuguese people in the process of political changes in the country.
Theater
Theater: During the first period, medieval drama was linked to the church and was almost always performed on religious dates, illustrating passages from the Bible or representing saints. With Gil Vicente in Portugal, the lay theater began, that is, non-religious practice outside the church.
Classicism
Classicism: In this period, there was a strong influence of the revived Greco-Roman culture, which continued the humanism. Where man once again became the center of attention, unlike what happened in the Middle Ages (where God was at the center). In literature, this period was marked by a new way of making poetry, called the sonnet, which was decasyllabic or, in relation to metrics, Alexandrine.
Features of Classicism
- Universalism
- Rationalism
- Anthropocentrism
- Paganism
- Neoplatonism
- Reference to Greek culture
- Fixed Form: Sonnet (2 Quartets and 2 Trios)
- Verses with up to 10 syllables (decasyllabic)
- Well-worked rhymes
Camões’ Poetry
Camões’ Lyric Poetry: He cultivated both old (redondilha) and new (decasyllabic) forms of poetry, with direct influence from Italian humanists, especially Petrarch. He employed composition types such as sonnets, eclogues, odes, elegies, and octaves. The most important topics are loving and philosophical reflection, Neoplatonism, and nature.
Love Lyric
The lyrical “I” expresses the impossibility of physical realization of love and sex, which damages true love, that is, the idea of love as universal, pure, and perfect abstraction, above all individual experiences.
Philosophical Lyric
Camões’ poems reveal a man discontent with the rumors of his time, dissatisfied with the new order that was being installed in that historical moment of transition to the bourgeois world.
Epic
Epic: An epic, or Epopéia, is a long narrative heroic poem, a collection of deeds, historical facts, of one or many individuals, real or legendary mythology. The secular Epopéia perpetuates ancestral traditions and legends, preserved over time through oral or written tradition. The first great models of Western Epopéia are the Homeric poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which have their origin in the legends of the Trojan War.
Sonnet: Two quartets and two trios: 4-4-3-3
Octaves: A stanza composed of eight verses.