Luís Vaz de Camões (ca.1524/25-1580) is reckoned the greatest poet in the Portuguese language, granting him a position in the national literature akin to that of Dante, Shakespeare, or Goethe. He wrote a considerable amount of lyric poetry and at least three dramas, but is best remembered for his epic poem Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads), which set out to be, and succeeded in being, a Portuguese epic of the nation that can stand alongside Virgil's Aeneid. As Jonathan Griffin ably demonstrates in this volume, however, his shorter works, mostly sonnets and redondilhas (roundels), are fine lyrics and ought to be given the same serious attention that the epic receives as of right. Little is known of Camões' life, other than what we see "reported" in the Lusiads, but we do know that he served as a common soldier in the East, serving in India, Africa and Macau.

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.

First published in 1572, The Lusiads is one of the greatest epic poems of the Renaissance, immortalizing Portugal's voyages of discovery with an unrivalled freshness of observation. At the centre of The Lusiads is Vasco da Gama's pioneer voyage via southern Africa to India in 1497-98. The first European artist to cross the equator, Camoes's narrative reflects the novelty and fascination of that original encounter with Africa, India and the Far East. The poem's twin symbols are the Cross and the Astrolabe, and its celebration of a turning point in mankind's knowledge of the world unites the old map of the heavens with the newly discovered terrain on earth. Yet it speaks powerfully, too, of the precariousness of power, and of the rise and decline of nationhood, threatened not only from without by enemies, but from within by loss of integrity and vision. The first translation of The Lusiads for almost half a century, this new edition is complemented by an illuminating introduction and extensive notes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Os Lusiadas is a Portuguese epic poem by Luis Vaz de Camoes. It is written in Homeric fashion and focuses mainly on a fantastical interpretation of the Portuguese voyages of discovery during the 15th and 16th centuries. Os Lusiadas is often regarded as Portugal's national epic, much in the way as Virgil's Aeneid was for the Ancient Romans, as well as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey for the Ancient Greeks. It was first printed in 1572, three years after the author returned from the Indies. The poem consists of ten cantos written in the decasyllabic ottava rima with the most important part, the arrival in India, at the beginning of Canto VII.