SOURCE: “History as Prophecy in Camões's Os Lusíadas,” in Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 22, No. 2, Winter 1985, pp. 145-50.

In this essay, Dixon argues that Camões' shaping of events in The Lusiads places da Gama's expedition at the pinnacle of Portugese history, and in so doing makes the poem itself the high point of the country's literary history.

Few would disagree with the assertion that Camões's Os Lusíadas,¹ as history, is an extremely imaginative history, formed at least as much by the poet's mentality as it is by the events it records.² Yet the difference between Os Lusíadas and other, more properly “historical” records is one of degree, and not of kind. If we define history as discourse about past events rather than as the events themselves, then any history must bear the imaginative imprint of its narrator. The happenings of a particular time span...