VIRGIL, CAMOES AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC TRADITION
Abstract
Of all works inspired by Virgil's Aeneid, the Lusiads (Os Lusfadas) of the Portuguese poet Luis Vaz de Cam5es (c. 1524/5-1580) must rank as the boldest and most imaginative. This masterly poem, constructed around the momentous voyage in which Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route from Europe to India via the Cape of Good Hope in 1497-1498, deserves to be more widely known outside Portugal than is presently the case,2 especially amongst teachers and students of classical epic poetry who live in South Africa. For this audience the Lusiads furnishes insights into a turning-point in the history of the African subcontinent, as well as evidence of how the classical epic literary tradition, received and transmitted by Virgil, shaped the form and content of a poem composed some sixteen centuries after Virgil's death.Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (BY-NC-ND 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).