The History of Portuguese Literature in English Translation: The Medieval Galician Portuguese Lyric and the Theatre of Gil Vicente

Portugal is England’s oldest ally (by the Treaty of Windsor, 1386) but only three Portuguese authors are widely known in the English-speaking world: Luis de Camoes, Eca de Queiroz and Fernando Pessoa. Or so it is commonly believed. But painstaking research and excavation reveal that since the 19th century, when the Romantic impulse impelled scholars to retrieve supposedly ‘lost’ works, Portuguese literature has been introduced over and over into English culture. Since their rediscovery, almost four hundred Galician Portuguese cantigas - sacred, profane and sometimes downright obscene - have been translated into English by some fifty different translators, including Scottish, Irish and American poets. Lyrics first composed and sung over seven centuries ago have lost none of their power to evoke a response or simply give pleasure. Five hundred years after their first performances at the Portuguese court, the autos of Portugal’s first playwright, Gil Vicente, are similarly enduring: a significant body of his work, including both poems and complete plays, has been translated into English. Vicente’s observations on human greed and moral frailty are as relevant on the 21st-century stage as they were in the Portugal of the Discoveries. Patricia Odber de Baubeta is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Catedra Gil Vicente in the University of Birmingham, where she has taught and researched in Portuguese since 1981.