SOURCE: Camoens and the Sons of Lusus, The Hispanic and Luso Brazilian Council, 1973, 18 p.

In this lecture, delivered in 1972 to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Lusiads, Atkinson praises Camões as the last great epic poet, offering a brief biography and a broad explication of his most famous poem. Atkinson focuses largely on Camões' neoclassical poetics, but also addresses his presentation of colonialism and his dedication of the epic to the young King Sebastian.

“Never ask a poet,” Socrates counselled long ago, “the meaning of his poem. He will be the last person who can tell you.” Socrates subscribed, beyond modern inclination, to the theory of divine afflatus, that would have the poet the unconscious instrument of purposes beyond his comprehension, a vehicle of oracular revelation. This much validity may still be allowed the concept, that it is one mark, indeed the hallmark...