Submergence, tragic subversion of Bacchus in Os Lusíadas

Abstract

This work was born from a question: what is the place of the poet in soci­ety? In order to build a response to this question, I analyze here in this es­say Camões’ character Bacchus, present in Os Lusiadas. Such investigation involves reading that character as an allegory of the poet adrift, as well as a poet thrown out of The Platonic Republic; Bacchus finds himself, after hav­ing his opinion fully rejected by the olympian gods in the first consilio of Camões’ epic, exiled physically as well as politically and intellectually. The choice of this character is justified since, in Camões epic, this god repre­sents a counterforce to the official discourse of the sixteenth-century Por­tugal, which aims always to praise the Portuguese historical glory.

Keywords

• Camões
• Os Lusíadas
• Baco
• poeta.