As Plantas na Obra Poética de Camões

Overview & Synopsis

The epic poem Os Lusíadas consists of 1,102 stanzas, each with eight decasyllabic verses (8,816 verses). Having travelled through the tropical Indo-Pacific region of Asia, with its high biodiversity and rich variety of spices, the number of plant species mentioned in this poem is almost double that cited in all of Camões' lyric poetry. As Camões travelled through forested islands, Os Lusíadas mentions many more tree species and tropical plants than his lyric poetry. As most of his lyric poems were written in Europe, references to European plants predominate. Camões; Lyric poetry (songs, eclogues, elegies, odes, redondillas, sextinas and sonnets) is fundamentally poetry of affection and love, and therefore references to herbaceous plant flowers predominate. Although Camões; lyric poetry has a greater number of verses (about 20% more than the epic poem), the phytodiversity referred to in lyric poetry is much lower (about half).