The Lusiad; or, The Discovery of India, an Epic Poem

Luís Vaz de CamõesProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.7
Word count
968K words
Chapters
97

Tags

English Originals Classical Literature Voyage AdventureNautical EpicHeroismAlien ExplorationPatriotismClassical VerseAge of ExplorationMythological AllusionsPortuguese LiteratureMusical Rhythm

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India, an Epic Poem by Luís de CamõesAuthor: Camões, Luís de, 1524?-1580,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: May 26, 2010

Editor's review

The Lusiad is the foremost epic of the Portuguese Renaissance. Taking Vasco da Gama's voyage to India as its thread, it weaves together maritime adventure, mythic intervention, and imperial narrative. This English translation from Project Gutenberg gives Chinese readers low-cost access to the scale and sweep of the original. Its value lies not only in its place in literary history but in how it renders early global voyages as national epic: sea gods and the god of wine share the stage with the human fleet, and real sea routes mirror classical myth. Readers will feel both the grandeur of maritime narrative and the limits of the imperial perspective. It suits comparative reading in the Western epic tradition and age-of-discovery literature, and is useful for students of Portuguese literature, colonial history, and translation history. As a public-domain ebook, it has limited edition information; pair it with a reliable introduction or literary history.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Start with a reliable synopsis to clarify how Vasco da Gama's voyage relates to the mythological subplots.
  2. After each chapter, review the correspondences between characters and deities to keep the threads clear.
  3. Read alongside a map of Portuguese maritime history to strengthen the sense of space and historical context.
  4. Look up classical allusions as you go; don't expect to grasp every metaphor on a first reading.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
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FAQ

Is this English translation suitable for beginners? It can serve as an entry point, but with support. The epic is long and interweaves myth and history, so read a synopsis and a literary-history introduction first; otherwise it is easy to get lost among characters and deities.
How does it differ from an ordinary travelogue? It is not a documentary travelogue but a national epic built on a voyage, with mythic intervention and classical rhetoric. Its focus is shaping a national image and imperial narrative, not recording the details of daily sailing.
What should I note about the public-domain ebook edition? Public-domain ebooks usually lack modern scholarly annotation and a detailed introduction, and edition information is sparse. Pair it with a literary history or reliable guide to understand the historical background and allusions.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Luís Vaz de Camões Author · Portuguese · 1524–1580

Luís de Camões (c. 1524–1580) was a Portuguese national poet born in Lisbon. His masterpiece, the epic Os Lusíadas (1572), takes Vasco da Gama's opening of the sea route to India as its thread and celebrates Portugal's glorious history, exerting a profound influence on Portuguese and Brazilian literature. His lyric poetry and dramatic works, published posthumously, have also been handed down. Publicly available Chinese-language material on him is limited, and scholarly verification of the details of his life remains incomplete; readers' understanding of the man and his work still rests mainly on the epic mentioned above and on his lyric and dramatic texts. This library holds six of his works, spanning epic, poetic drama, and collected editions.