Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Dedication
- Introduction
- Lope García de Salazar: la formación de un bibliófilo y de su biblioteca
- El camino espiritual a Jerusalén a principios del Renacimiento
- Tipos y temas trovadorescos, XX: Fernan Velho
- Cómo vive un soneto: sobre “Perdido ando, señora, entra la gente”
- Del claustro al pliego suelto: la obra de Antonio de Espinosa
- The Bestiary Tradition in the Orto do Esposo
- As Diffinçõoes de Calatraua (1468), numa Versão Portuguesa
- Damião de Góis's Translation and Commentary on Cicero's De Senectute
- Muestrario de incunables catalanes de la Biblioteca Colombina
- Between Ballad and Parallellistic Song: A Condessa Traidora in the Portuguese Oral Tradition
- Dois Casos de Heróis Sem Terra: Rodrigo e Guillaume d’Orange
- El Tratado del menospreçio del mundo ¿de Juan del Encina?
- Cantiga and Canso
- Luís Vaz de Camões and Fernão Mendes Pinto: A Comparative Overview of their Lives in Asia and After
- New Dates and Hypotheses for Some Early Sixteenth-Century Dramatic Texts Suggested by an Alcalá Annotator of Nicolás Antonio
- Los pliegos sueltos del siglo XVI después del Nuevo Diccionario
- “Moricos los mis moricos”: observaciones sobre el romancero carolingio
- Manuscritos e Textos dos Príncipes de Avis: o Leal Conselheiro e Outros Manuscritos: Problemas de Deriva Filológica e Tentativa de Reintegração
- Autobiografia, Cultura e Ideologia em Peregrinação de Fernão Mendes Pinto
- The Sepultura de Macías by San Pedro – But Which San Pedro?
- Tablante de Ricamonte before and after Cervantes’ Don Quixote
- Bibliography of Arthur Lee-Francis Askins
- Tabula Gratulatoria
Luís Vaz de Camões and Fernão Mendes Pinto: A Comparative Overview of their Lives in Asia and After
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Dedication
- Introduction
- Lope García de Salazar: la formación de un bibliófilo y de su biblioteca
- El camino espiritual a Jerusalén a principios del Renacimiento
- Tipos y temas trovadorescos, XX: Fernan Velho
- Cómo vive un soneto: sobre “Perdido ando, señora, entra la gente”
- Del claustro al pliego suelto: la obra de Antonio de Espinosa
- The Bestiary Tradition in the Orto do Esposo
- As Diffinçõoes de Calatraua (1468), numa Versão Portuguesa
- Damião de Góis's Translation and Commentary on Cicero's De Senectute
- Muestrario de incunables catalanes de la Biblioteca Colombina
- Between Ballad and Parallellistic Song: A Condessa Traidora in the Portuguese Oral Tradition
- Dois Casos de Heróis Sem Terra: Rodrigo e Guillaume d’Orange
- El Tratado del menospreçio del mundo ¿de Juan del Encina?
- Cantiga and Canso
- Luís Vaz de Camões and Fernão Mendes Pinto: A Comparative Overview of their Lives in Asia and After
- New Dates and Hypotheses for Some Early Sixteenth-Century Dramatic Texts Suggested by an Alcalá Annotator of Nicolás Antonio
- Los pliegos sueltos del siglo XVI después del Nuevo Diccionario
- “Moricos los mis moricos”: observaciones sobre el romancero carolingio
- Manuscritos e Textos dos Príncipes de Avis: o Leal Conselheiro e Outros Manuscritos: Problemas de Deriva Filológica e Tentativa de Reintegração
- Autobiografia, Cultura e Ideologia em Peregrinação de Fernão Mendes Pinto
- The Sepultura de Macías by San Pedro – But Which San Pedro?
- Tablante de Ricamonte before and after Cervantes’ Don Quixote
- Bibliography of Arthur Lee-Francis Askins
- Tabula Gratulatoria
Summary
My interest in a comparative study of the lives of Luís Vaz de Camões and Fernão Mendes Pinto dates back to l998 when I was invited by the Department of History of The Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore) to give a seminar on Portuguese Culture à propos the commemoration of the fifth centenary of Vasco da Gama's arrival in India. As a Professor of Literature, I chose to focus on the works of those two masters of the Portuguese Golden Age in which reflections of the Overseas Expansion of the sixteenth century can be seen: Camões’ The Lusiads, Mendes Pinto's The Peregrination.
During the time I taught courses on Renaissance and Baroque literature at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, my approach had always been based on the conviction that a close reading (the works, duly supported by an appropriate historical and theoretical background) would be more profitable than the old method of giving primary attention to biographical details. In spite of this conviction, in the case of Camões I could not but recognize the importance of the record of his life experiences during the time he spent in Asia, however scanty and controversial, considering the role they play in The Lusiads and in his poetry in general. As for Fernão Mendes Pinto, due to the autobiographical nature of The Peregrination, the available data on the subject became obviously essential. Therefore, unable to avoid the biographical approach in a preliminary stage, I decided to elaborate a program starting with a comparative reading of the available information on the lives of both authors, particularly concerning their Asian experience, intended to function as a backdrop to the subsequent analysis of their works.
Such comparative reading required a detailed chronology of the lives of those authors in the East, a challenging task due to the uncertainty of the available information. But with that approach, I was trying not only to find answers to questions I had been asking myself for quite a while, but also to stimulate the students to further study and investigation.
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- Medieval and Renaissance Spain and PortugalStudies in Honor of Arthur L-F. Askins, pp. 228 - 234Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006