[In the following essay, Brownlee perceives a double transgression in The Lusiads—Vasco da Gama's violation of epic values and Camões's transgression against the epic voice in writing his poem.]

Transgression in epic—its normative role—is one of contrast. The transgressive character or impulse in question is ritualistically eliminated in favor of the cultural values celebrated by the text. Little, if any, space exists for deviation in the matter of epic or the voice that articulates it. In the case of Camões' Lusiads, however, we find operative a surprising double transgression—of his material and his medium. This essay seeks to foreground the calculatedly problematic interpretation that is built into the text by its rich exploitation of mythic discourse.

According to Jorge Luis Borges—one of the foremost mythographers of our time—there exist two basic myths. He writes:

[L]os hombres, a lo largo del tiempo, han repetido siempre dos historias: la de un bajel perdido que busca por los mares mediterráneos una isla querida, y la de un dios que se hace crucificar en el Gólgota.¹

men, throughout time, have always told and retold two stories: that of a lost ship which searches the Mediterranean seas for a dearly loved island, and that of a God who is crucified on Golgotha.

The Crucifixion is an episode in the Biblical epic which has a secular counterpart in the wanderings of the individual hero of romance—what Northrop Frye has termed the “secular scripture.”² Renaissance epic confronts these two mythic structures, dramatizing their potential for discord—witness Ariosto, Tasso, and Milton. Camões posits a similar duality, yet the terms of his narrative—his authorial perspective—are, as we shall see, radically different.

The Lusiads is a text which tends to be viewed by modern scholarship, rather harshly, as a somewhat defective example of Renaissance epic primarily because of Camões' use of myth. Indicative of this negative assessment is Thomas Greene's judgment that the poem depicts: “cosmic confusion, the result of introducing pagan gods into a professedly Christian work, [this] is the most naïve of its faults and has attracted a great deal of critical attack, particularly in view of the important roles played by Venus and Bacchus. The author's blunder is not really helped by the predictable identification of Jupiter with Christian Providence in the final canto.”³ Greene concludes categorically by stating that: “Camões is foremost among those Renaissance poets who were determined to introduce pagan machinery at whatever cost in coherence.”⁴

The other criticism leveled against the poem is based on a thematic consideration—that the heroic epic voyage has been reduced to a mercantile venture. Differentiating The Lusiads from the canonical texts of the period, David Quint notes that “Renaissance epic insists on the mercantile cast of the romance adventure in order, in Tasso's case, to distinguish the voyage of discovery from its false commercial twin, or, in Milton's, to disclose the true economic nature of that voyage.”⁵ Camões, in Quint's view, transgresses by attempting to endow a mercantile venture with the status of epic. To my mind, however, this assertion, like Greene's denigration of myth in the poem, constitutes a misreading predicated on a limited appreciation of Camões' unique authorial perspective.

Scholes and Kellogg differentiate three types of narrative perspective which have been in evidence since antiquity: those of 1) the epic bard; 2) the histor; and 3) the eye-witness. And the distinctions they posit are, I believe, very pertinent to an articulation of Camões' poetic innovation. The epic bard derives his identity and his authority from tradition. His is an anonymous voice which celebrates what amounts to a sacred text in the forging of a national consciousness. Because of this performative function, the role of the bard is clearly limited in its interpretive flexibility.⁶ By contrast, “the histor as narrator is not [simply] a recorder or recounter but an investigator. He examines the past with an eye toward separating out actuality from myth … Where the traditional poet must confine himself to one version of the story, the histor can present conflicting versions in his search for the truth of fact. Thucydides is the perfect type of ancient histor, basing his authority on the accuracy of conclusions he has drawn from evidence he has gathered.”⁷ The third type of authority is that of the eye-witness of first-person narrative.⁸

What has not been recognized to date is the fact that Camões departs from the normative role of the epic bard in order to assume the perspectives of the histor and the eye-witness—and the effects of this authorial shift cannot be overstated. Moreover, given his overt departure from the traditional epic stance, it is not logical to criticize Camões—as Greene and Quint do—for not conforming to the features which define it.

That Camões is offering the histor's point of view is corroborated, among other ways, by the extradiegetic addresses he offers to his readers at the end of virtually every one of the poem's ten cantos. For in them he confronts such perilous topics (in terms of the axiology of epic) as, for example: man's insignificance, his true nature being that of “um bicho da terra tão pequeno,”⁹ an “insignificant insect”; that the real motivation for Vasco da Gama's trip is not religious fervor but greed, it being not an age of gold, but of iron—with Prometheus, Phaeton, and Icarus serving as avatars of the Portuguese enterprise (canto IV); and that contemporary Portugal is debased by lust and greed (canto X).

Rather than offering an encomium to the past glories of Portugal, Camões writes from the perspective of disillusion, the former glories of the nation having given way to irresponsibility. As William Atkinson puts it: “the native virtues of the race appeared to him to have wilted under prosperity, people at home not realizing at what cost of blood, sweat and tears their empire had been built.”¹⁰ Foremost among Portugal's immediate problems was the boy-king, Sebastião, who acceded to the throne at the age of 14, in 1568. It was in this pessimistic mood that Camões addressed the prologue-dedicatory and the epilogue of The Lusiads to the king. In it he seeks to point out to the young monarch the problems which beset the empire so that he would, hopefully, alter his priorities. Unfortunately, the poem serves, in a sense, as a failed speech act, for rather than inspiring Sebastião to remedy Portugal's many problems, the king continued on his irresponsible course which culminated in 1578 in his ill-fated crusade to North Africa, thus dealing the death blow to the Portuguese empire which would soon fall into the hands of Spain. (In fact, Portugal would not regain its independence until the year 1640.)

Camões is quite pointed in criticizing the king himself, in the form of the unflattering analogy with the myth of Actaeon in canto IX.¹¹ Because of Sabastião's misogyny and his reckless devotion to the hunt above all other causes (including the issue of progeny and the consolidation of his realm), Camões offers the example of Actaeon, whom he describes as follows:

Via Acteon na caça tão austero,
De cego na alegria bruta, insana,
Que, por seguir um feio animal fero,
Foge da gente e bela forma humana;
E por castigo quer, doce e severo,
Mostrar-lhe a fermosura de Diana;
E guarde-se não seja inda comido
Desses cães que agora ama, e consumido.

(IX, 26)

There was Acteon, so austere in his devotion to the chase, so obsessed by his irrational, brutish pleasures that he eschewed the company of his kind, and especially of lovely womankind, in order to pursue ugly, savage beasts. His punishment was bitter-sweet, for he was to be given a glimpse of Diana in all her beauty—and let him beware that he be not finally devoured by his own dogs. (204)

The backdrop of The Lusiads is, thus, very different from the context in which Virgil wrote the Aeneid; It does not offer an “official discourse.”

In addition to the explicit admonitions found at the end of the cantos, there is a striking and programmatic use of negative myths to represent Vasco da Gama and his enterprise. In so doing, Camões seeks to dramatize the fact that da Gama's success in pagan romance terms constitutes a failure in terms of Christian epic. The economy of material values and the economy of spiritual values are presented as being mutually defining negatively; one is the negation of the other. Having made this claim regarding Camões' conflicting attitudes toward da Gama's voyage, let us now turn to textual examples which bear out such an interpretation, examples of carefully chosen subversive myths.

To begin with, the validity of the mythological machinery is seriously called into question early in the text when we are informed that Mars decides to champion the Portuguese cause either because of his prior love for Venus or because the Portuguese deserve his support in their quest for a spice route (I, 36). This admission obviously has the effect of questioning the validity of the Portuguese enterprise as well as the judgment of the gods. (In this connection, it is also important to note that da Gama's prayers to God are never answered by him or by one of his Christian emissaries, but rather by Venus. This too casts doubt upon the validity of da Gama's quest.)

Among the legendary figures who serve as analogues for da Gama, we find several references to Alexander the Great. Bacchus vows to prevent da Gama's success by establishing the link with Alexander early in canto I as he declares:

Mas há-se de sofrer que o Fado desse
A tão poucos tamanho esforço e arte,
Que eu co grão Macedónio e Romano
Dêmos lugar ao nome Lusitano?!

(I, 75)

It is not sufferable that [da Gama and his crew] should be gifted with such skill and daring that alike Alexander and Trajan and I should have to give way to the name of Portugal. (50)

Clearly, Bacchus fears the competition posed by the Portuguese explorer's attempt to discover a spice route to India. For Bacchus is credited with being the first to discover India and thus, da Gama's success would threaten his “monopoly.” Bacchus is even more personally involved with the Portuguese nation, however. As Camões points out, Lusus (the etymological origin of Lusitania—that is, Portugal) is, according to some mythographers, the son of Bacchus, according to others, he is Bacchus' closest friend. Camões includes both mythographic ascriptions, refusing to favor one over the other. And in so doing, he generates a kind of generalogical/etymological imprecision which is notable in an epic—indeed, it is rather disturbing. These multiple interpretations of Bacchus reveal the perspective of the histor, not that of the bard, who seeks to guarantee the legitimacy of his epic enterprise by genealogical specificity. In addition, by defying Bacchus, Camões seems to be suggesting that da Gama transgresses against the father.

An appreciably different association with Alexander is suggested in canto V. Here da Gama is portrayed by the poet as being decidedly inferior to Alexander—not in terms of personal fortitude but rather in terms of intellectual and, more importantly, moral refinement. In this case, Alexander is presented as a reader. I quote from canto V: “Não tinha em tanto os feitos gloriosos / De Aquiles, Alexandro, na peleja, / Quanto de quem o canta os numerosos / Versos” (V, 93). By contrast:

Trabalha por mostrar Vasco da Gama
Que essas navegações que o mundo canta
Não merecem tamanha glória e fama
Como a sua, que o Céu e a Terra espanta …
Lia Alexandro a Homero de maneira
Que sempre se lhe sabe à cabeceira.
Enfim, não houve forte capitão
Que não fosse também douto e ciente,
Da lácia, grega ou bárbara nação,
Senão da portuguesa táo sòmente.
Sem vergonha o não digo, que a razão
De algum não ser por versos excelente
É não se ver prezado o verso e rima,
Porque quem não sabe arte, não na estima.
Por isso, e não por falta de natura,
Não há também Vergílios nem Homeros;
Nem haverá, se este costume dura,
Pios Eneias nem Aquiles feros.
Mas o pior de tudo é que a ventura
Tão ásperos os fez e tão austeros,
Tão rudos e de engenho tão remisso,
Que a muitos lhe dá pouco ou nada disso.

(V, 94-98)

Da Gama had striven to show that these voyages of old that all the world tells of did not merit such fame and glory as his own at which heaven and earth alike stood amazed … Alexander read Homer so assiduously that he seems to have made him his bedside book. Never, in short, was there a great warrior of any nation, Roman, Greek, or any other beyond the pale, save only Portugal, who was not at the same time a man of science and learning. I say it not without shame, for the reason why none of us stands out is our lack of esteem for poetry. He who is ignorant of art cannot value it. For this reason, and not for any lack of natural endowments, we have neither Virgils nor Homers; and soon if we persist in such a course, we shall have no pious Aeneases or fierce Achilles either … And worst of all is the fact that fortune has made us so uncouth, so austere, so unpolished and remiss in things of the mind that many are scarcely interested even that this should be so. (138-39)

From this intervention we see that Camões' praise for da Gama is as a scientist, an explorer who, like his compatriots, is incapable of appreciating exemplary figures from the past. At the same time, the poet cleverly anticipates any negative reactions which his poem may elicit, casting his critics—along with da Gama—into the category of “bad readers.” Indeed, the explorer is explicitly presented as an unworthy subject for epic poetry when Camões writes:

Às Musas agradeça o nosso Gama
O muito amor da Pátria, que as obriga
A dar aos seus, na lira, nome e fama
De toda a ilustre e bélica fadiga;
Que ele, nem quem na estirpe seu se chama,
Calíope não tem por tão amiga
Nem as filhas do Tejo, que deixassem
As telas de ouro fino e que o cantassem.

(V, 99)

Let da Gama be grateful to the Muses that they love his country as they do, and have felt constrained in consequence to exalt his name among his fellow-countrymen by celebrating in verse the whole story of his illustrious and material enterprise. For neither he nor his were on such friendly terms with Calliope or the other Muses of the Tagus as to make them on that account leave their weaving of cloth of gold to sing his praise. It is their sisterly love for the Portuguese people and their disinterested pleasure in bestowing due praise on their collective achievement that alone move the kindly nymphs in the matter. (139-40)

Another interesting exploitation of myth designed to point out da Gama's failings occurs at the strategically located midpoint of the text, which corresponds, moreover, to the geographical midpoint of his voyage. The midpoint sequence in epic, as in romance, is frequently a privileged locus of illumination for the reader, often disclosing an essential feature about the hero's identity. Camões exploits this moment to introduce the giant Adamastor. This particular giant is found in Claudian's Gigantomachia, in Rabelais, as well as in Ravisius Textor. In general terms, the phenomenon of the love-lorn giant is something of a fixture in travel literature (and other kinds of literature as well)—we have only to think of the cyclops, Polyphemus, whom Ulysses encounters in the Odyssey, of Polyphemus' love for Galatea in Ovid's Metamorphoses XIII, and of Virgil's ninth Eclogue.¹² In addition, the giant in question always poses a threat to the traveler, testing his fortitude. Polyphemus curses Ulysses just as Adamastor curses da Gama.

Beyond this traditionally adversarial relationship between hero and giant, however, we find, rather surprisingly, that Adamastor and da Gama are portrayed as having much in common. Firstly, Adamastor condemns the Portuguese explorer for his excess of presumption. And while it is true that da Gama defies the gods, Adamastor himself explains that he was guilty of this same transgression. More precisely, he, like da Gama, was a sea captain who disputed Neptune's command of the deep. Similarly transgressive was Adamastor's attempt to take Thetis, the wife of Peleus, by force. Although he failed in his attempt, he was punished by being changed from a man into a sterile promontory. Again, we see that da Gama's identity as explorer is foregrounded, as Adamastor proclaims:

“Eu sou aquele oculto e grande Cabo
A quem chamais vós outros Tormentório,
Que nunca a Ptolomeu, Pompónio, Estrabo,
Plínio, e quantos passaram fui notório.
Aqui toda a africana costa acabo
Neste meu nunca visto promontório,
Que pera o Pólo Antárctico se estende,
A quem vossa ousadia tanto ofende.”

(V, 50)

“I am that mighty hidden cape called by you Portuguese the Cape of Storms, that neither Ptolemy, Pomponius, Strabo, Pliny nor any other of past times ever had knowledge of. This promontory of mine, jutting out towards the South Pole, marks the southern extremity of Africa. Until now it has remained unknown: your daring offends it deeply.” (130-31)

Like Adamastor, da Gama is the audacious sea captain who will defy Neptune. Also like the giant, he will attempt to seduce another Thetis—Thetis the sea nymph (canto IX). And he will, moreover, succeed. If we are inclined to read this series of parallel features shared by the giant and the explorer as a mark of the latter's prowess, we are called upon at the same time to view da Gama's behavior as monstrous. The multiple (and problematic) interpretations to which this passage gives rise offer, I would suggest, further evidence of the histor at work.

Pursuing the issue of da Gama's liaison with Thetis—its etiology—yields further examples of Camões' transgressive use of myth to portray da Gama's dark side. His mating with the nymph is the direct result of Cupid's moral conscience. In a very atypical presentation of the god of love, we see him brooding about the base inclinations of men and are informed that he is planning to:

Fazer ũa famosa expedição
Contra o mundo revelde, por que emende
Erros grandes que há dias nele estão,
Amando cousas que nos foram dadas,
Não pera ser amadas, mas usadas.

(IX, 25)

“[mount] a major expedition against rebellious mankind, that had lately lapsed into serious error through giving its heart to things meant to be used [e.g., power and riches] not to be loved.” (203-04)

With the help of his mother, Venus, Cupid decides to remedy this situation by smiting the nymphs on Venus' magic isle with love for the mariners. For her part, Venus wants to provide the Portuguese with much needed rest and recreation in recognition of their outstanding achievement. In order to effect the union of the nymphs and mariners, Cupid enlists the aid of Fame (“A Deusa Giganteia, temerária, / Jactante, mentirosa e verdadeira, / Que com cem olhos vê, e, por onde voa, / O que vê, com mil bocas apregoa” [IX, 44]) (“the bold and boastful giantgoddess, the speaker both of falsehood and of truth, with a hundred eyes to see and a thousand mouths to broadcast, in her rovings, all she saw” (207)].

As we might expect, having arrived at the edenic island retreat, da Gama and his men spend many hours enjoying the company of the nymphs. At this point, however, Camões surprises us even more radically than he did by having Cupid serve as the spokesman of moral rectitude, immediately before he effects the lustful liaisons of the Portuguese with the nymphs; for what we find at the climax of the amorous revelling is an unanticipated rewriting of Macrobius's dream of Scipio. Yet unlike the Macrobian text, in which Scipio is visited in a dream by his grandfather who reveals to him the entire universe, da Gama makes the same journey in a fully conscious state, guided by the principal nymph, Thetis. This is not the only difference, however. For the knowledge attained by Scipio during his dream is strikingly opposed to da Gama's perceptions. As a result of his aerial journey, Scipio sees, among other things, the earth in its true perspective—that is, its insignificance. From his heavenly vantage point, he remarks: “iam ipsa terra ita mihi parva visa est ut me imperii nostri quo quasi punctum eius attingimus paeniteret”¹³ (“From here the earth appeared so small that I was ashamed of our empire which is, so to speak, but a point on its surface”¹⁴). Likewise, he comes to understand the truth of his grandfather's observations on the perishability of earthly fame as the ancestor remarks:

“quis in reliquis orientis aut obeuntis solis ultimis aut aquilonis austrive partibus tuum nomen audiet? quibus amputatis cernis profecto quantis in angustiis vestra se gloria dilatari velit. ipsi autem qui de nobis loquentur quam loquentur diu?” (“Somnium Scipionis,” 6.4)

“But who will ever hear of your name in the remaining portions of the globe? With these excluded, you surely see what narrow confines bound your ambitions? And how long will those who praise us now continue to do so?” (75)

He concludes with an all-important distinction between the body and the soul and the need for the contemplation of the soul's superior importance:

“namque eorum animi qui se corporis voluptatibus dediderunt earumque se quasi ministros praebuerunt impulsuque libidinum voluptatibus oboedientium deorum et hominum iura violarunt, corporibus elapsi circum terram ipsam volutantur nec hunc in locum nisi multis exagitati saeculis revertuntur.” (“Somnium Scipionis,” 9.3)

“[T]he souls of those who have surrendered themselves to bodily pleasures, becoming their slaves, and who in response to sensual passions have flouted the flaws of gods and men, slip out of their bodies at death and hover close to the earth, and return to this region only after long ages of torment.” (77)

If we consider da Gama in terms of Scipio's three revelations 1) the insignificance of earthly empire; 2) the ephemeral nature of earthly fame; and 3) the need to consider spiritual, rather than material, concerns), we realize that his values are strikingly dissimilar, indeed, the opposite of Scipio's. He has at no point been introspective and his most esteemed incentive is fame. In addition, da Gama's aerial expedition is designed, I would suggest, to be read against an earlier journey to the Moon narrated in canto IV. In it King Manoel (1495-1521) confronts Camões' mythological creation: the Old Man of Belen—a figure reminiscent of both Nestor and Cassandra. As he gazes at da Gama's ship he shakes his head three times, declaring that this ostensible golden age is in reality an age of iron: “O glória de mandar! ó vã cobiça / Desta vaidade a quem chamamos fama! / … Dura inquietação de alma e da vida / … Sagaz consumidora conhecida / De fazendas, de reinos e de impérios! / Chamam-te ilustre, chamam-te subida, / Sendo dina de infames vitupérios” (IV, 95-96) [“Oh the folly of it, this craving for power, this thirsting after the vanity we call fame … It wrecks all peace of soul and body … subtly yet undeniably consumes estates, kingdoms, empires. Men call it illustrious, and noble, when it merits instead the obloquy of infamy” (120)].

By means of this original rewriting of Scipio's dream as a misappropriated Macrobian exemplum, I would suggest that Camões boldly crystallizes his disapproval of da Gama and his enterprise. Along similar lines, Camões moves abruptly from the pagan isle of love to overtly Christian discourse. Among the unexpected admissions made by Thetis is her explanation regarding the Empyrean, that:

“Aqui, só verdadeiros, gloriosos
Divos estão, porque eu, Saturno e Jano,
Júpiter, Juno, fomos fabulosos,
Fingidos de mortal e cego engano.
Só pera fazer versos deleitosos
Servimos …” (X, 82)

“Here dwelleth only the true saints in glory. Saturn, Janus, Jupiter, Juno, myself, we are but creatures of fable, figments of man's blindness and self-deception. Our only use is for turning agreeable verses.” (234)

Several Camonian critics have objected to this precipitous shift in focus from pagan to Christian. A. Bartlett Giammatti is indicative of them when he observes: “what is most objectionable in the garden of Venus is the swiftness with which Camões goes from his pagan premises to his Christian conclusions.”¹⁵ I would argue, however, that this type of perspectival and axiological discord has been operative throughout the text, serving to contrast da Gama's failure in Christian terms with his simultaneous success in terms of pagan romance. Significantly, it is Camões' highly original deployment of myth which makes the histor's bivalent presentation possible.

Finally, Camões presents himself as an eye-witness to da Gama's voyage, lending an additional dimension of authority to his account. Like the Latin translators of “Dares” and “Dictys,” who argue the superior accuracy of their accounts of the Trojan war over that of Homer, Camões can claim a similar kind of truth status for his writing. Ironically, it is this stance of the eye-witness which da Gama claims as the source of his privileged, scientific discourse—as the guarantee of its authenticity. It is this narrative perspective which he feels liberates him from the burden of any epic obligations. We are told explicitly that:

… o Gama, que não pretende mais,
De tudo quanto os Mouros ordenavam,
Que levar a seu rei um sinal certo,
Do mundo que deixava descoberto,
Nisto trabalha só, que bem sabia
Que, depois que levasse esta certeza,
Armas e naus e gentes mandaria
Manuel, que exercita a suma alteza,
Com que a seu jugo e lei someteria
Das terras e do mar a redondeza;
Que ele não era mais que um diligente
Descobridor das terras do Oriente.

(VIII, 56-57)

Da Gama's only concern was that he should not be prevented from carrying back a trustworthy account of the world he had discovered; and to this end he bent his activities, knowing well that King Manoel, on receipt of his information, would send ships, men and arms sufficient to reduce to his sway and to the Christian faith the whole expanse of land and sea.” (189-90)

The “frailty” of Camões' “frail bark” (“fraco barco”) resides in its self-conscious status not as an epic vessel but as a boat of romance. Likewise, the author's “frail voice” is feeble by the end of his poem not because of its duration, but rather its painful subject:

No'mais, Musa, no'mais, que a lira tenho
Destemperada e a voz enrouquecida,
E não do canto, mas de ver que venho
Cantar a gente surda e endurecida.
O favor com que mais se acende o engenho,
Não no dá a Pátria, não, que está
metida
No gosto da cobiça e na rudeza
Dũa austera, apagada e vil tristeza.

(X, 145)

And now my Muse, let there be an end; for my lyre is no longer attuned and my voice grows hoarse, not from my song, but from seeing that those to whom I sing are become hard of hearing and hard of heart. This country of mine is made over to lust and greed, its sense of values eclipsed in an austerity of gloom and depression: there is no longer to be had from it that recognition which fans the flame of genius as nothing else can. (247)

A final striking mythological analogue is chosen by Camões to figure himself—namely Canace, the putative author of Ovid's eleventh heroid. As she is about to commit suicide she writes to her brother—with whom she has unwittingly committed incest—clutching a sword in one hand and a pen in the other. In other words, she writes of transgression; she acknowledges the fact of her incest, registers the horror at this fact, and indicates her impending death. For his part, Camões describes himself “Qual Cânace que à morte se condena, / Nũa mão sempre a espada e noutra a pena” (VII, 79) [“I am another Canace self-condemned to death with the sword in one hand and a pen in the other” (176)]. I would suggest that Camões' link to Canace is his own clearly perceived equation of writing and transgression—a double transgression for he is writing of transgression (that is, da Gama's transgression of enshrined epic values) while exposing the act of writing itself as transgression against the institutionalized epic voice.

Notes

1. Jorge Luis Borges, “El Evangelio según Marcos,” Obras completas 1923-72 (Buenos Aires: Emercé, 1989) 1070.

2. Northrop Frye, The Secular Scripture: A Study in the Structure of Romance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1976) 15.

3. Thomas Greene, The Descent from Heaven: A Study in Epic Continuity (New Haven: Yale UP, 1963) 225.

4. Greene, The Descent from Heaven, 225.

5. David Quint, “The Boat of Romance and Renaissance Epic,” Romance: Generic Transformation from Chrétien de Troyes to Cervantes, ed. Kevin Brownlee and Marina Scordilis Brownlee (Hanover, NH: UP of New England, 1985) 196; In another recent study, José Martins Garcia advances instead a deconstructionist reading of the poem: “Porque não seria Camões, dadas as suas muitas ambiguidades, um subversor do sentido, uma personalidade análoga a esse Fernando Pessoa que tudo nega afirmando e tudo destrói exaltando, exaltando até a vontade, que entende como jogo gratuito perante a vacuidad da existência?” (“A Contradição fundamental de Os Lusíadas,” in Camoniana Californiana, ed. Maria de Lourdes Belchior and Enrique Martínez-López [Santa Barbara: Jorge da Sena Center for Portuguese Studies, University of California, 1985] 15). I feel that such a reading, while suggestive, is anachronistic and contradicts the axiology constructed by the poem's textual specificity.

6. Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1966) 242.

7. Scholes and Kellogg, 243.

8. Scholes and Kellogg, 243.

9. Luís de Camões, Os Lusíadas, ed. Frank Pierce (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973). All subsequent references to this edition, with canto and stanza number provided; here, I, 106.

10. William C. Atkinson, The Lusiads (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1952) 19. All English translations are Atkinson's; references are to page number.

11. For an interesting discussion of the mythographic legacy of Actaeon in the Renaissance and Camões' exploitation of it to depict Sebastião, see Américo da Costa Ramalho, Estudos Camonianos (Lisbon: Instituto Nacional de Investigação Científica, 1980).

12. For an informative discussion of Adamastor's multiple subtexts and his paramount importance to Camões' myth making, see David Quint, “Voices of Resistance: The Epic Curse and Camões' Adamastor,” Representations 27 (1989): 111-41.

13. Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, ed. J. Willis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1970); here “Somnium Scipionis,” 3.7.

14. Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, trans. William Stahl (New York: Columbia UP, 1952) 72. All English translations are Stahl's; references are to page number.

15. A. Bartlett Giammatti, The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1966) 223.