THE MEMORY OF PORTUGAL REGISTERED IN THE LUSÍADAS (1572) AS A POLITICAL-IDEOLOGICAL RESOURCE FOR THE LEGITIMATION OF THE FIRST PORTUGUESE REPUBLIC: AESTHETIC-LITERARY ASPECTS IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY

• DOI: 10.22533/at.ed.929342311052

• Palavras-chave: Camões. Identity. Memory.

• Keywords: Camões. Identity. Memory.

• Abstract:

  The writer Luís Vaz de Camões used some archetypes in his thinking, such as the Sea and Messianism, the question of the warrior people whose mission was to take faith and the empire to other lands, expansionist nationalism, exalting warlike and historical facts in the records literary epics that established themselves as the hypertrophied image in the Portuguese collective identity: the incessant search for an irrecoverable past, lost in the golden times of the past, as taught by Eduardo Lourenço in Psicanálise mítica do Destino Português. The idea is based on the premise that Os Lusíadas (1572) are the greatest builder of the mythogenic and poetic architecture of Portuguese nationality and, therefore, unifying the collective identity of the Portuguese. We find aspects of patriotism rooted in the work, the dedication to D. Sebastião and the influence of Camões’ thought, which rescues the history of Portugal in order to understand the identity reconstruction proposed by the Portuguese Renascença Portuense and the ideological use of Camões by republicans with notably political purposes. We demonstrate, through the imagery-textual records of Portuguese magazines from the Tercentenary of Camões and Discourse Analysis, the discursive and historical processes used to achieve their political objectives and establish the first Portuguese republic in 1910.