Medieval Literature

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Age of the Troubadours

   Courtly troubadour poetry in Portugal began in the 13^th century with the reign of Alfonso III and reached its height during the reign of his son Dom Diniz, an excellent troubadour himself. A few authors stand out in the 13^th century; the priests Airas Nunes and Joan Airas de Santiago, João Garcia de Guilhade, and the jogral (professional musician) Martin Codax. The songs of the troubadours were of three types: cantigas de amor, or plaintive love songs; cantigas de amigo, or songs about suitors, put into the mouths of women in delightful native forms still alive in oral folk tradition; and cantigas de escarnho e de mal dizer, or mocking and slanderous songs. More than 2000 songs of the troubadours survive. They are gathered in three cancioneiros, or songbooks, and a fourth book of a different character, containing legends in praise of the Virgin Mary by King Alfonso X of León and Castile. Portuguese prose of the 13^th and 14^th centuries consists of livros de linhagens (anecdotal registers of noble lineages); chronicles; saints’ lives and other edifying literature translated from the Latin; and adaptations of the Arthurian romances about the knights of the Round Table.

Poetry

    Though no literary documents belonging to the first century of Portugal's history as a nation have survived, there is evidence of the existence of an indigenous popular poetry. A few compositions from before 1200 survive; one, attributed to Sancho I, is the earliest extant parallelistic song, a brief, repetitive lyrical poem marked by a wistful sadness that is never wholly absent from Portuguese literature. Of the many later poems that survive, most belong to the major categories of Aantigas de Amor; Cantigas de Amigo (songs of love) sung by a man to the woman he loves in vain, Cantigas de Amigo (songs of the lover) sung by a woman to express her yearning for her lover, Cantigas de Escárnio e Maldizer: (satirical songs) 

    This body of lyrics, represented in three great cancioneiros, shows the vitality of a school of poetry in Galician-Portuguese (the dialect of northern Portugal) that, while essentially inspired by the sophisticated French and Provencal songs of the troubadours, is also anchored in the popular tradition.

    This poetry reached the peak of its creativity in the first half of the 13th century, coinciding with the reign of Afonso III (1248-79). His son, Dinis, had a deep interest in literature and was considered to be the best poet of his age in the Iberian Peninsula. Dinis founded his country's first university at Lisbon in 1290 (it later was moved to Coimbra) and encouraged translation into Portuguese of outstanding works from Spanish, Latin, and Arabic. To his court came troubadours from Leon, Castile, and Aragon to enjoy the last of a cult dying elsewhere, and about 2,000 poems by its 200 poets were preserved in the three great repositories of verse, Cancioneiros da Ajuda, Cancioneiros da Vaticana, and Cancioneiros Colocci-Brancuti (or da Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa). 

    In contrast with the restricted horizons of courtly verse, themes of adventure, war, and chivalry mingled with love, religion, and the sea in a collection of ballad poetry known as the romanceiro. Few of these ballads can be dated earlier than the 15th century; they belonged to an anonymous poetry kept alive by oral transmission, with a late artificial flowering from known poets in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Prose

    Prose literature in Portugal took much longer than verse to perfect. Religious writings, brief annals of the early kings, and books of descent formed the earliest texts. The Livro de Linhagens ("Book of Genealogy") of Pedro Afonso, count of Barcelos (the natural son of Dinis), constituted a landmark by going beyond genealogy to history and legend. The work contains short epic narratives, romances, and tales of adventure and fantasy. Pedro was also responsible for the compilation in 1344 of the Crónica Geral de Espanha ("General Chronicle of Spain"), interesting, within the peninsular tradition of the general chronicle genre, for its original version of well-known episodes.

    The early popularity of subject matter based on Celtic tradition is attested in the five songs based on Breton lays with which the Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti opens. The ideals of chivalry and the spirit of sentimental adventure associated with the knights of the Round Table made strong appeal to the Portuguese imagination: a História dos Cavaleiros da Távola Redonda ("History of the Knights of the Round Table") and the Demanda do Santo Graal ("Search for the Holy Grail"), adapted from the French, are the chief relics of considerable activity in this field.