“Quem pode livrar-se, porventura, dos laços que Amor arma brandamente?”: a reading of the queens in The Lusiads

Abstract

This article proposes to think of The Lusiads as a love epic, which has its maximum in the feminine. For this, we will briefly analyze the interventions of Venus in the narrative, as a sponsorship of the Portuguese cause, and we will deepen the manifestations of the goddess of love in their human equivalences: the queens Teresa, Maria, Inês and Leonor. As the theme of love permeates the poem until its climax, in the episode of Ilha dos Amores, we perceive that the feminine also has a preponderant role in the diegesis of the epic, whether in the political game in which the aforementioned royal figures are involved, or in the conduction of the sailors in the travel. On this wise, we understand that the feminine, in its regal human form, occurs in the triad woman-love-water in opposition to man-land-war, the masculine. Therefore, Vasco da Gama’s speech, although impregnated with conceptions of his time, the medieval period, reveals the language that the poet uses in The Lusiads: a poem of love, which the feminine is also a lusíada hero.