Pastoral Imagery in Luso-Brazilian Literature

Literary critics have often considered the pastoral a minor phenomenon within the broader history of European literature. Despite the pastoral’s popularity during the Renaissance, fictional shepherds and their amorous suffering have largely not been at the center of literary production or scholarship. This is also true within Lusophone literatures, where the pastoral stands mostly as a kind of aesthetic/stylistic exercise anchored in classical European antiquity and with no real connection to the present. The essays in this special volume push against the marginalization of the pastoral, and their authors openly seek to redeem the dynamic and foundational character of the pastoral within Portuguese and Brazilian literature. This volume underscores, in particular, how the pastoral has helped to define Lusophone colonial imagery between the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe.