S

(1524?-1580)

BY HENRY R. LANG

Portuguese literature is usually divided into six periods, which
correspond, in the main, to the successive literary movements of the
other Romance nations which it followed.

_First Period_ (1200-1385), Provencal and French influences. Soon
after the founding of the Portuguese State by Henry of Burgundy and
his knights in the beginning of the twelfth century, the nobles of
Portugal and Galicia, which regions form a unit in race and speech,
began to imitate in their native idiom the art of the Provencal
troubadours who visited the courts of Leon and Castile. This courtly
lyric poetry in the Gallego-Portuguese dialect, which was also
cultivated in the rest of the peninsula excepting the East, reached
its height under Alphonso X. of Castile (1252-84), himself a noted
poet and patron of this art, and under King Dionysius of Portugal
(1279-1325), the most gifted of all these troubadours. The collections
(_cancioneiros_) of the works of this school preserved to us contain
the names of one hundred and sixty-three poets and some two thousand
compositions (inclusive of the four hundred and one spiritual songs of
Alphonso X.). Of this body of verse, two-thirds affect the artificial
style of Provencal lyrics, while one-third is derived from the
indigenous popular poetry. This latter part contains the so-called
_cantigas de amigo_, songs of charming simplicity of form and
naivete of spirit in which a woman addresses her lover either in a
monologue or in a dialogue. It is this native poetry, still echoed in
the modern folk-song of Galicia and Portugal, that imparted to the
Gallego-Portuguese lyric school the decidedly original coloring and
vigorous growth which assign it an independent position in the
mediaeval literature of the Romance nations.

Composition in prose also began in this period, consisting chiefly in
genealogies, chronicles, and in translations from Latin and French
dealing with religious subjects and the romantic traditions of British
origin, such as the 'Demanda do Santo Graal.' It is now almost certain
that the original of the Spanish version of the 'Amadis de Gaula'
(1480) was the work of a Portuguese troubadour of the thirteenth
century, Joam de Lobeira.

_Second Period_ (1385-1521), Spanish influence. Instead of the
Provencal style, the courtly circles now began to cultivate the native
popular forms, the _copla_ and _quadra_, and to compose in the
dialect of Castile