, which communicated to them the influence of the
Italian Renaissance, with the vision and allegory of Dante and a
fuller understanding of classical antiquity. These two literary
currents became the formative elements of the second poetic school of
an aristocratic character in Portugal, at the courts of Alphonse V.
(1438-1481), John II. (1481-95), and Emanuel (1495-1521), whose works
were collected by the poet Garcia de Resende in the 'Cancioneiro
Geral' (Lisbon, 1516).

The prose-literature of this period is rich in translations from the
Latin classics, and chiefly noteworthy for the great Portuguese
chronicles which it produced. The most prominent writer was Fernam
Lopes (1454), the founder of Portuguese historiography and the "father
of Portuguese prose."

_Third Period_ (1521-1580), Italian influence. This is the classic
epoch of Portuguese literature, born of the powerful rise of the
Portuguese State during its period of discovery and conquest, and of
the dominant influence of the Italian Renaissance. It opens with three
authors who were prominently active in the preceding literary school,
but whose principal influence lies in this. These are Christovam
Falcao and Bernardim Ribeiro, the founders of the bucolic poem and the
sentimental pastoral romance, and Gil Vicente, a comic writer of
superior talent, who is called the father of the Portuguese drama, and
who, next to Camoens, is the greatest figure of this period. Its real
initiator, however, was Francesco Sa' de Miranda (1495-1557) who, on
his return from a six-years' study in Italy in 1521, introduced the
lyric forms of Petrarch and his followers as the only true models for
composition. Besides giving by his example a classic form to lyrics,
especially to the sonnet, and cultivating the pastoral poem, Sa' de
Miranda, desirous of breaking the influence of Gil Vicente's dramas,
wrote two comedies of intrigue in the style of the Italians and of
Plautus and Terence. His attempts in this direction, however, found no
followers, the only exception being Ferreira's tragedy 'Ines de
Castro' in the antique style. The greatest poet of this period, and
indeed in the whole history of Portuguese literature, is Luiz de
Camoens, in whose works, epic, lyric, and dramatic, the cultivation of
the two literary currents of this epoch, the national and the
Renaissance, attained to its highest perfection, and to whom
Portuguese literature chiefly owes its place in the literature of