Meters of Classical Antiquity in Portuguese language

Abstract

This project intends to trace a history of the experiments on transposing classical meters into the Portuguese language. It is known that classical metrics, established by poets and handbook writers of the Antiquity, are based on Latin and Greek's phonological and prosodic features that are absent from the Romance languages. Therefore, all attempts of transposing those meters into Portuguese, a Romance language itself, are a problem that demands some poetic trick as a solution. This project intends not only to analyze those solutions, but also to understand the ways in which poets and translators framed the transposition as a problem, the assumptions and conditions of these formulations; and also the reception - immediate and posterior - of such attempts. The base corpus established to the project gives preference to the so-called stichic meters (e. g. dactylic hexameter and pentameter), and elects, as central writers: Carlos Alberto Nunes (1897-1990), Carlos Magalhães de Azeredo (1872-1963), Vicente Pedro Nolasco da Cunha (1774?-1844), trying to extend the research up to the 16th century, towards an analysis of Fra Antonio de Portalegre's "Passion Play" (auto da Paixão).