THE “CARTAS PORTUGUESAS” (PORTUGUESE LETTERS) AND THE TRADITION OF THE “UNREQUITED LOVE" IN THE PORTUGUESE LITERATURE OF FEMALE VOICE

Inserted in the perspective of literary studies, this paper proposes an analysis of the “Cartas Portuguesas” (Portuguese Letters), a work attributed to Mariana Alcoforado, assuming that this work is constituted within the Lusitanian literature as an important formative element of the imaginary loving Portuguese female voice. Through the study, it is possible to identify the fact that the letters are prefaced, stylistically or thematically, by the songs of love and of friend, and succeeded by works such as “Livro de Sóror Saudade” (Book of Longing Sóror), of Florbela Espanca, and “Novas Cartas Portuguesas” (New Portuguese Letters) by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Velho da Costa and Maria Teresa Horta.

THE GALICIAN-PORTUGUESE LYRIC AND THE 17TH-CENTURY LOVE POETRY: ARTS OF LOVE, SONGS AND WRITTEN SONGS

In this paper, we discuss important echoes of Galician-Portuguese lyric that remain in the 17th-century love lyric poetry produced in Portugal. In order to achieve this main objective, we highlight some specificities of the troubadours’ lyric and of the 17th-century poetry, particularly the fundamentally musical character of the troubadours’ songs as opposed to the fundamentally written character of the 17th-century poems. This contrast indicates that they are compositions from different times (predominantly the 13th and the 17th centuries) and produced according to distinct poetic conceptions. However, they are compositions which are also similar in many ways, and whose similarities, especially regarding the lyrical genre, point to similar quests for perfect practice of love, outlining “arts of love” understood as unsystematic precepts of loving which are practiced in poetry. In this article, we intend to show that these poetic loves are technically conceived and, as historical constructs, they differ from each other, since they are characterized by their peculiar moments of achievement. However, they are not isolated in the time. As mentioned above, the troubadours’ songs are essentially musical while the 17th-century poems, as indicated by the prevalent poetic preceptive in their time, are essentially written. Nevertheless, those trobar songs reverberate in these poems (“written songs”) and in both kinds we read and listen to similar precepts of love, as though we were in labyrinths of love echoes with no way out.