Paper short abstract:

Since Ovid, metamorphosis is a major model for Western literature. This paper raises questions and proposes meanings for this genre as a symbolic appropriation within Portuguese early modern poetry. Describing metamorphosis on both sides of the Atlantic is a way of taming colonial landscapes.

Paper long abstract:

During Early Modern times, Classical poetry served as a model to emulate, and among the models, Ovid's Metamorphoses was particularly fertile. Within the Portuguese literature there are important re-elaborations of Ovid's lessons, being the Adamastor episode from Os Lusíadas the most important. The aim of this paper is to recognize the metamorphosis as a poetic genre that performs a literary appropriation of elements that belong to the Atlantic world for the symbolic system of Portuguese poetry. For that, this presentation presents the most important poetic texts that describe metamorphosis, analyses both literary and geographical elements that those texts incorporate and how do they do that, and finally, proposes a theoretical framework to understand the importance of metamorphosis as a literary genre/topic for the validation of the Portuguese Colonial Atlantic Empire. This exercise claims, in a broader sense, a new understanding of the function of poetry, above all narrative poetry, for the Portuguese Imperial project.