PORTUGUESE LITERATURE Oxford University Press _London_ _Edinburgh_ _Glasgow_ _Copenhagen_ _New York_ _Toronto_ _Melbourne_ _Cape Town_ _Bombay_ _Calcutta_ _Madras_ _Shanghai_ Humphrey Milford Publisher to the UNIVERSITY PORTUGUESE LITERATURE BY AUBREY F. G. BELL [Illustration] OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1922 [Illustration] TO THE TRUE PORTUGAL OF THE FUTURE _La letteratura, dalla quale sola potrebbe aver sodo principio la rigenerazione della nostra patria._ GIACOMO LEOPARDI. [Illustration] _This book was ready in October 1916, but the war delayed its publication. A few alterations have now been made in order to bring it up to date. It is needless to say how welcome will be further suggestions, especially for the bibliography. Only by such help can a book of this kind become useful, since its object is not to expatiate upon schools and theories but to give with as much accuracy as possible the main facts concerning the work and life of each individual author._ AUBREY F. G. BELL. S. JOÃO DO ESTORIL, PORTUGAL. _July 1921_ CONTENTS _Introduction_ PAGE Portuguese literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos--Dr. Theophilo Braga--Portuguese prose--Portuguese writers in Spanish and Latin--Character of the Portuguese--Special qualities of their literature--Splendid achievement--Lack of criticism and proportion but not of talent 13 I. 1185-1325. [i. e. from the accession of Sancho I to the death of Dinis.] § 1. _The Cossantes_ 22 Earliest poems--Their indigenous character and peculiar form--Their origin--Galicia in the Middle Ages--The pilgrimages--Dance-poems--Themes of the _cossantes_--Their relation to the poetry imported from Provence--Writers of _cossantes_: Nuno Fernandez Torneol--Joan Zorro--Pero Meogo--Pay Gomez Chariño--Airas Nunez’ _pastorela_--The _cantigas de vilãos_--Songs of women--Persistence of the _cossante_ to modern times--_Cossantes_ and _cantigas de amor_. § 2. _The Cancioneiros_ 37