Camões (ca.1524/25-1580) is the national poet of Portugal, with a
status in the Lusophone world akin to that of Shakespeare, Dante,
Cervantes and Goethe elsewhere. A wonderful lyric poet, and also an
occasional dramatist, his masterpiece is Os Lusíadas (The
Lusiads), an epic poem on the beginnings of the Portuguese maritime
empire, for which the author himself had fought as a common soldier
- in North Africa - where he lost an eye in battle, in India, in
southern Africa, the Red Sea, India and Macau - where the grotto in
which he wrote some of the poem is a tourist attraction. As Dante
took Virgil as his guide in the Divine Comedy, so Camões uses the
great navigator, Vasco da Gama, as his tutelary spirit, while also
aping Virgil's approach in the Aeneid, fashioning a national epic
on the empire's origins in much the same way as Virgil had done for
the Rome of Augustus. The translation here, dating from 1655, is
one of the great translations of the 17th century, made while Sir
Richard Fanshawe (1608-1666), a supporter of Charles I and Charles
II, was under house arrest during the Cromwellian inter-regnum.
Fanshawe also translated two Spanish plays and a number of Spanish
sonnets from the period around 1600-1630, with some of the finest
being from the baroque master Luís de Góngora. Unlike many of his
successors, Fanshawe tries to stay close to the original,
occasionally at the cost of having to twist the English to fit the
rhyme and metre, the target language having, even in this more
flexible era, far fewer resources for rhyme than the Portuguese.
The results, nonetheless, are something of a monument, giving voice
to a very long and complex poem and making it work, almost, as an
English epic. Fanshawe, when not at his desk, was an accomplished
diplomat, having served in the Madrid embassy and, after the
Restoration, as Ambassador in Lisbon, where he negotiated the
marriage of Charles II to Catherine of Braganza.
General
Imprint: |
Shearsman Books
|
Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
Series: |
Shearsman Classics, 29 |
Release date: |
July 2021 |
Authors: |
Luis Vaz de Camoes
|
Translators: |
Sir Richard Fanshawe
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 22mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
380 |
Edition: |
New edition |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-84861-679-0 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
1-84861-679-1 |
Barcode: |
9781848616790 |
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