Ovidian and Virgilian Arcadian Resonances in Cláudio Manuel da Costa

Abstract

Cláudio Manuel da Costa, who, by literary convention, has long been regarded as the foremost representative of Luso-Brazilian Arcadianism, declares in the “Prologue” to his Obras (1768) his predilection for the simple style rooted in Greco-Latin tradition. From this declaration, one investigates, in the poet from Mariana, the allusion to the pastoral genre and to the harmonious yearning of Arcadia, especially with regard to the inspiration drawn from the Ovidian and Virgilian Muses. However, a tension between mildness and laceration can be discerned in the shepherd Glauceste Satúrnio, whose sentiment evokes the lament of the exiled poet from Sulmona. This assumption is established through an intertextual relation and is based on the recognition of the presence of an Arcadian metamorphosis in the poet from Minas Gerais. The singer of Vila Rica calls himself a “pilgrim” in his own homeland while simultaneously seeking to establish an Arcadia in the Province of Minas Gerais, aspiring to the development of his colonial birthplace. Thus, the reception of the poets of Antiquity by the Luso-Brazilian Arcadian becomes more plausible, considering the reverberations of the Arcadian ideal of harmony as well as the topos of exile linked to aspects of duality.