SOURCE: “Alabaster and Gold: A Study of Dialectics in Os Lusíadas,” in Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 17, No. 2, Winter 1980, pp. 199-206.

In this essay, Jackson maintains that in The Lusiads, Camões establishes “dialetics” between such oppositions as Occident/Orient, sacred/profane and history/prophecy. Rather than creating ambiguity, he argues, these dualities express the power of myth and metaphor to create unity.

Dialectics, in the sense of the nature of logical argumentation, although conveyed through poetic metonym or metaphor, has been perceived as having a central role in the poetic art of Camões. In an approach to Camões' lyric poetry published in Lisbon in 1951, Jorge de Sena used the term “dialectic” in reference to a philosophical or aesthetic world view as elaborated in certain sonnets and songs.¹ By “dialectic” Sena understood a fragmented vision of the world in which conflicting impulses undermined any harmony that might...