Luís de Camões’ Os Lusiadas in uncharted waters

Any new critical approach to Luís de Camões’ Os Lusiadas (1572) must depend on documented evidence. However, “skewed readings” (Balachandra Rajan) have formed a large part of the poem’s critical reception, not least in this century. This essay attempts to provide a sobering corrective to these readings. For this purpose, it provides a summary of the conditions in which Os Lusiadas was first published, the main tenets of Camões’s historical discourse, some specifics of genre as it was practised in Iberia at the time and a brief description of Camões’s extraordinary but problematic use of Classical mythology. In all, this essay is intended as a synthesis of my present views on poet and poem.