SOURCE: “The Lusiads: Epic Celebration and Pastoral Regret,” in Portuguese Studies, Vol. 6, 1990, pp. 32-7.

In this essay, Macedo evaluates the effect of Camões' “integration of pastoral values into the epic discourse” of The Lusiads. According to Macedo, the message of the poem is that “pastoral peace is the result of properly directed heroism.”

The epic and the pastoral reflect contrasting historical perceptions. From the viewpoint of the pastoral, associated with the myth of the Golden Age, the very subject matter of epic celebration—voyages and quests, wars and conquests—reveals the degeneration and decadence that characterizes the Iron Age. The epic celebrates what the pastoral regrets.

In one of the best-known passages of the Metamorphoses, Ovid tells us that in the impious Iron Age, the final collapse of the ancient pastoral harmony of the Golden Age is marked when the trees were brought down from the mountains...