Camões and the Slave Bárbora: Canon, Beauty, and Skin Colour

Commemorating the 500th Anniversary of Camões’s Birth.

During the long period between the Renaissance and the outset of Romanticism, in European literature the Petrarchan example was a role model establishing a common code for recognized aesthetic and human values. In relation to the representation of the feminine form, a woman is exalted when her physical beauty seems at one with the perfection of her soul. In the sixteen century, Portuguese poet Luís de Camões reverently flowed this model as well. Nevertheless, he dedicated one of his most beautiful poems to a black enslaved woman, named Bárbora. This lecture will approach the terms of Camões woman laudation, and also the interpretative questions raised by a black woman praise.

Rita Marnoto is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra. Her career is dedicated to the study of Italian literature, Portuguese literature, and the relationships between the two. Marnoto has held various university management positions, currently serving as Director of the PhD program in Modern Languages at this Faculty. She has directed research projects on Luís de Camões and collaborated on several international projects. She has published numerous studies on Luís de Camões, and distinguished the first edition of Os Lusíadas, of 1572, from the counterfeit that imitates it, a problem awaiting a solution since the beginning of the 17th century.

Marnoto received the honorary title of “Grande Ufficiale della Repubblica”, the “Premio Flaiano per l’Italianistica”, and the “International Publications Award” from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra. She is Vice-Director of the “Centre International d’Études Portugaises de Genève”, a member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, and of the “Accademia della Crusca”.