On the influence of the classical tradition in the eighteenth century there can be no doubt. Leandro Fernandez de Moratin (1760-1828) was able to compose dramatic works following the supposedly Aristotelian ‘‘three unities,’’ but literary history, the fruit of post-Kantian Romanticism, underestimated this century precisely for its lack of originality. Still, at the end of the nineteenth century, the children of the Romantics returned their gaze to classical antiquity. And the so-called ‘‘generation of ’98’’ was firmly grounded in the classics. Men such as Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) and Antonio Machado (1875-1939) found their roots in the thought, artistic theories, and styles of antiquity. Vergil returned to Catalan letters with the Renaixenca, the movement in defense of the Catalan language, at the beginning of the second third of the nineteenth century, according to Jose Luis Vidal (1988: 973-5). Marcelino Menendez Pelayo (1856-1912) published important studies of the classical tradition in Spain and America. And one cannot escape mentioning a novelist like Juan Valera (1824-1905), who recognized the value of Ruben Dario and his classical roots, since he himself had just finished a Spanish translation of Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe.
The classical tradition in Portugal begins in the Renaissance. Medieval Portuguese literature such as the Cantigas de amor (Songs of love) and the Cantigas de amigo (Songs of lovers), written in Portuguese and Galician, do not appear to bear the influence of classical tradition. Furthermore, in the Renaissance, the majority of Portuguese writers wrote in Spanish: a good part of the theater of Gil Vicente (1470?-1536), almost all the work of the poet Sa de Miranda (1481?-1558), the work of Jorge de Montemayor (1520?-1561), and a good part of the works of even Luis de Camoens (1524?-1580) were written in Spanish. From the seventeenth century the great prose writer Francisco Manuel de Melo (1608-66) also wrote in Spanish.
I trace the bare outlines of what has been studied for this material, which is not much, since Romantic literary criticism has predominated, exalting original nationalistic Portuguese works more than the classical tradition. But I should pause over the great epic poet Luis de Camoes. A recent study by Jose V. de Pina Martins, ‘‘El humanismo en la obra de Camoes,’’ considers that this humanism ‘‘would have to be defined by what the poet owes to his masters, Homer and Vergil’’ (1982: 14). With irrefutable authority, he affirms that the reading of the poet ‘‘was immense in the area of Greco-Roman literature,’’ although he recognizes that Camoes was ‘‘a reader of anthologies, since any cultured man of the sixteenth century, travelling as he did, could not take along an entire library’’ (14-15). Concerning his Platonism, Pina Martins recalls that
In the monologue of the main character of one of his works, the Auto llamado Filodemo (Auto called Philodemus), he speaks of Plato, of Bembo, Garcilaso, Laura and the sonnets of Petrarch. This offshoot, which denounces the existence of anti-Platonic and anti-Petrarchan cultural currents, implicitly proves that the poet was very sensible to the impact and the work of Platonism and Petrarchism. (19)
However, Pina Martins warns that even more than a manifestation of Petrarchism, Camoes’ style is a stilnovismo movement, which becomes fashionable in Italy starting in 1527 (22). On the other hand, he notes that in the lyric poetry there may be detected the strong presence of Ovid (29). In his Estudios portugueses (Portuguese studies, 1974), Eugenio Asensio notes multiple classical sources for Portuguese authors of the Renaissance and Baroque.
FURTHER READING
Unfortunately, very little on the classical tradition in Spain has been published in English. Di Camillo (1988) offers a useful overview of Spanish humanism and its roots in the classics, while Beardsley (1970) surveys Spanish translations of Greek and
Latin authors published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ettinghausen (1972) and Kallendorf and Kallendorf (2000) trace the classical roots of Francisco de Quevedo, who can serve as a representative of Golden Age culture. For those who can read Spanish, the works of Menendez Pelayo (1950-3, 1952-3, 1962) and Lida de Malkiel (1975) remain fundamental. Several studies trace the influence of particular classical authors in Spain: Seneca (Bluher 1983), Martial (Gil 2004), Terence (Gil 1984), Lucian (Vives Coll 1959), and Vergil (Gil 1988, Morreale 1988, and Vidal 1988). Finally, two excellent works on the classical roots of the key writers of Spain and Portugal, Marasso (1947) on Cervantes and de Pina Martins and Asensio (1982) on Camoes, deserve mention.
This chapter has been translated by Hilaire Kallendorf.
A Companion to the Classical Tradition Edited by Craig W. Kallendorf Copyright © 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
World History
