Camões, Prince of Poets by Clive Willis (review)

It is a considerable privilege—and no less a responsibility—to review a title that represents both a significant contribution to a major area of study and something akin to the summa of a distinguished career; all the more daunting in that the title in question is, on several scores, far from unproblematic.

Camões, Prince of Poets (henceforth, CPP) comprises ten “chapters” by Clive Willis (Robert Clive Willis), professor emeritus at the University of Manchester and, over the past nearly half-century, one of the undisputed deans, in the UK and beyond, of Camões scholarship as well as scholarship on other matters having to do with late-medieval and early-modern Portugal. The “chapters,” whose titles are nicely indicative of the book’s sequence, are as follows: the introductory “Camões, Son of the Renaissance” (1–15); “Os Lusíadas and Renaissance Neoplatonism” (17–81); “Os Lusíadas and the Humanism of Reform” (83–120); “Camões and Kingship” (121–141); “Os Lusíadas and Its Neoclassical Critics” (143–162); “Os Lusíadas and the Censor” (163–173); “Camões and Lisbon” (175–189); “Camões and Spain” (191–205); “Camões in Goa and Macau” (207–226); and “The Correspondence of Camões” (227–278). Those units are followed by an apparatus that includes a good bibliography and a thorough index, the latter of which allows use of the body of the book as a reference source. Also, the last chapter reproduces the texts of the extant correspondence judged to be authentically of Camões’ authorship, as well as English translations of that correspondence; it thus serves as a valuable resource of another sort.

The word “chapters” appears in quotes above because in their first form the individual pieces were not conceived with the goal of producing this book. What appear in CPP are reworked versions of public lectures, of professional journal articles, and of Willis’ own doctoral dissertation. They saw their initial publication, in either English or Portuguese, over the period from 1964 to 2002. Given that fact, it is truly remarkable that CPP evidences the considerable degree of coherence and sequential logic that it does.

Nevertheless, for those reasonably familiar with the literature, it will be obvious that some titles have been considerably reworked to help bring the book concept to fruition while others remain all but untouched. An example in the latter category is to be seen with the eighth chapter, “Camões and Spain.” It was originally published in Donaire (London) in 1994 (3: 59–66 [not 69–66 as CPP would have it]) and is reprinted virtually unchanged save for minimal bibliographical updating. Now it makes sense within CPP’s organizational scheme that the later chapters, treating discrete topics as they do, can fittingly remain in something like their original stand-alone status after the wide preparation provided the reader by the earlier chapters. But other issues sometimes intervene. In the case of the eighth chapter the reader will find repetition of the substance (and, in places, the detail) of analyses advanced in the earlier chapters. Indeed, such repetition—more often than not unremarked-upon—is not unusual throughout CPP. In most instances it is not felicitous.

An example at the other extreme: Willis’ third chapter draws extensively from his article “Camões e o erasmismo,” published in Ocidente (Lisboa) in 1964 (67: 202–208). The article has long been one of the standard stops for any course of study about the gravitation of early-modern humanist thought within Portuguese letters. The CPP chapter’s good overview analysis of period ruminations on the validity of war, for example, and on different possible “kinds” of war—defensive war, holy war, etc.—draws directly from the earlier article. The book chapter is, however, several times the size of the Ocidente article and sets in a Europe-wide context the material that the two pieces share. In general CPP’s version is a broader and more robust contribution, and it centers Camões...