If the sec. XVI is the most original of Portuguese literary history and is the one that frames the elaboration of the great national epic, if the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have a great variety of genres and a great bookish fertility, the sec. XIX is the Portuguese golden century for human intensity and for its artistic completeness. In the century XIX, a people, which before liberalism did not count more than two million souls, perplexed and doubtful in the face of the spread of political and aesthetic ideals, to whose formation it will not collaborate, with a freedom of action limited by the competition of two powerful rival nations, England and France, and from the exasperating inferiority of the rulers, he could nevertheless accomplish three great things. The first was his struggle for freedom, from 1810 to 1834, a few decades of struggle between an elected minority with a renewing soul and a conservative majority and an illiterate population, years of armed struggle and intellectual struggle, of sacrifices and heroic sufferings, in which minds of superior temper, thinkers, political leaders were tested and military: Pedro IV, Garrett, Herculano, Mousinho da Silveira, the Duke of Palmella, Passos Manuel, José Estevam, Marshal Saldanha, the Duke of Terceira, Sá da Bandeira, Costa Cabral, etc. From this tragic and innovative clash between absolutism and liberalism, a new literature was born, in exile, which had deeper affinities with other Latin literatures. Without the romantic and realistic phase, Portuguese literature would be essentially limited to the 10th century. XVI: His priority in peninsular lyricism would not be enough, auto, colonial historiography, the prose writers of the century. XVII and the gestation of Brazilian literature to raise it above the modest academic and erudite sphere. Only the great writers of the century. XIX enriched it with all the currents of thought and sensitivity, made it a docile instrument to express all the emotions and anxieties, all the problems of conscience and the aesthetic refinements of modern man, who in reading seeks rather the training of life than the erudite interpretation of the dead past. This literature was the second great action that Portugal carried out in the century. XIX. The third was the cooperation given to the geographical knowledge of the African continent, in the area assigned to Portugal, when Europe turned its attention to Africa.
According to directoryaah, Portuguese romanticism was born from the importation of the new aesthetic and the main importers were Garrett and Herculano, exiled for political reasons. It is clear that it would not be impossible to trace Portuguese precursors in the previous century who announced a new aesthetic; but only a powerful personality, that of the poet Bocage (1756-1805), could rightly be considered as a true pre-romantic, due to its sentimental exuberance. Portuguese romanticism lasted from 1825 to 1865, but survived in the subsequent realism, so that it can be said that, once the romantic taste was established, it no longer abandoned the Portuguese soul, so much is it identified with it. During this forty years Portugal produces a group of very important works and reveals a group of vigorous literary personalities. Garrett (1799-1854) introduces romantic lyricism and historical theater, reforms prose, collaborates on the historical novel inaugurated by Herculano and translates the romantic concept into life. But the historical novel is the fiefdom of Alexandre Herculano (1810-77), who dedicated himself to the construction of his monumental Historia de Portugal (1846-53). Distinguished followers continue the elaboration of the new sensibility, albeit a little artificially. José Freire de Serpa (1814-1870) is at the head of the group of medievalist poets, who idealize the chivalric life of the ancient centuries in the ballad. João de Lemos (1819-1889) conducts the renewed opera, which has its organ in the Trovador ; Soares de Passos (1826-60) introduces soft, deeper tendencies into that lyricism that has Novo Trovador as an innovative newspaper. The historical novel is dedicated to Oliveira Marreca (1805-89), Rebello da Silva (1822-1871), Andrade Côrvo (1829-90), Coelho Lousada (1828-59) and Arnaldo Gama (1828-69); to the passionate novel João de Azevedo (1815-1854), AP Lopes de Mendonça (1826-1865), and, above all, Camillo Castello Branco (1826-90), one of the most vigorous Portuguese writers of all time, great for fertility, for the variety of tones and genres, and for the supreme power of stylistic expression. Francisco Maria Bordallo (1821-61) makes maritime novels and Julio Diniz (1839-1871) rural novels, a work that is still one of the most alive today. Historical theater and social drama, a la Victor Hugo, had numerous followers, including Costa Cascaes (1815-1898) and Mendes Leal (1818-1886). But the theater is the weakest aspect of Portuguese romanticism, essentially lyrical, narrative and historiographical. They devoted themselves seriously to history, all reflecting the influence of the master Herculano, Luz Soriano (1807-91), Rebello da Silva, Mendes Leal and Latino Coelho (1875-91). Political, sacred and academic eloquence knew glory days which it owed to Passos Manuel (1801-1862), José Estevam (1809-62), Garrett, Silveira Malhao (1794-1860), Rebello da Silva and Vieira de Castro (1838 -72). Furthermore, there was a valuable production of travel books, short stories and literary and political journalism; this difficult and ephemeral genre had its greatest prestige in AP Lopes de Mendonça and Rodrigues de Sampaio. political, sacred and academic eloquence knew glory days which it owed to Passos Manuel (1801-1862), José Estevam (1809-62), Garrett, Silveira Malhao (1794-1860), Rebello da Silva and Vieira de Castro (1838-72) ). Furthermore, there was a valuable production of travel books, short stories and literary and political journalism; this difficult and ephemeral genre had its greatest prestige in AP Lopes de Mendonça and Rodrigues de Sampaio. political, sacred and academic eloquence knew glory days which it owed to Passos Manuel (1801-1862), José Estevam (1809-62), Garrett, Silveira Malhao (1794-1860), Rebello da Silva and Vieira de Castro (1838-72)). Furthermore, there was a valuable production of travel books, short stories and literary and political journalism; this difficult and ephemeral genre had its greatest prestige in AP Lopes de Mendonça and Rodrigues de Sampaio.
In Lisbon, Oporto, Coimbra three literary centers were established, similar for the dominant ideas and parallel in the historical development. Lisbon was at the head of it, but did not centralize the innovating movement since the lyrical generations of 1837, 1844, 1851 arose in Coimbra, and from Porto the main satirical voice of romantic poetry, Faustino Xavier de Novaes (1822-64), and there two great ronanzieri lived, Julio Diniz and Camillo, who drew much of their literary material from the north. Realism was born in Coimbra, in a student environment, but soon moved and concentrated its forces in Lisbon. The province will be abandoned and literary evolution, with its cosmopolitan character, will be a constant source of dissatisfaction and criticism of national life. Only at the end of the century. XIX, with the nationalism of the same age as symbolism, the taste of the Portuguese land and of the different regions will return. Thus organized, romantic literature, rich in new and productive ideas, with the patriotism and optimism of the periods of reconstruction, even had an expansive influence. During Romanticism, Brazil became acquainted with European literatures mainly through Portuguese translations and Portuguese interpretation, and in its bosom it welcomed some Portuguese writers. They visited Brazil AF de Castilho and his brothers, also writers, Vieira de Castro, Matheus de Magalhães, Faustino Xavier de Novaes, Ernesto Biester (1829-80), Antonio Mendes Lea (1831-1871), etc. In Portugal, two of the most outstanding Brazilian writers of this period were artistically formed: Panorama, a member of the conservatory, which was then a kind of literary academy, founded on the initiative of Garrett; and the poet Gonçalves Dias (1823-64), who studied at the University of Coimbra and was one of Freire de Serpa’s friends in his literary group.
On the death of Garrett and after the retirement of Herculano, who devoted himself to agriculture, in an impulse of skepticism, the leadership of the Romantic movement passed to Castilho, who took on this new aesthetic coldly, as a complex of formal artistic precepts, to which he indulged himself in order to exercise literary purism. Some retards, who accepted his guide, even managed to arouse the sympathy of the public and knew the triumph with some works: Thomaz Ribeiro (1831-1901), with several loose poems, which spread and spread, and, above all with the poem Dom Jayme (1862), gospel of Hispanophobia based on the memory of sixty years of political and civil slavery, Pinheiro Chagas (1842-1895), with the Morgadinha de Valflor, one of the best dramatic accomplishments of romanticism; and Simões Dias (1844-99), with his Figuras de cera and Peninsulares (1870).
