Ethos and pathos in Portuguese literary historiography: the biography of Camões by Teófilo Braga in the light of the concepts of historia ornata and magistra vitae

Abstract

This article investigates the influence of classical rhetoric on Teófilo Braga’s biography of Camões. We shall demonstrate that, although the scholar is considered the “plenitude of nineteenth-century historiography,” that is, fully integrated with the historicist principles of the nineteenth century, there would also be a conceptual and methodological influence of ancient rhetoric in him. In this text, Braga thus expresses fundamental rhetorical-historiographical perspectives for Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Cicero’s The Orator, and Rhetoric to Haerennius. In fact, whether in the initial publication to celebrate the third centenary of Camões’ death or in its reinsertion in História da Literatura Portuguesa, Volume II, Renascence, his criteria directly echo the principles of magistra vitae and historia ornata, that is, historiography as a moral and social guide that, to really work, would require ornamentation. We argue that these principles reached Teófilo Braga through the intermediation of the 17th century in Portugal, which largely witnessed the ancient genre of vitae. Thus, despite 19th-century terminology, Braga would present a Camonian vita shaped by the principles of classical rhetoric and historiography, developing an inspiring and accessible profile to rescue the Portuguese people who was supposedly distant from their identity. Furthermore, we will point out two singularities of this version in relation to the 17th-century practice: the association of the poet with nationality and a process of humanization of his figure, instead of the construction of an unattainable monument. This humanization would be based on a logic that is also central to classical rhetoric, but which Braga aligns with a supposed general Portuguese ethos, sublimated by the poet: the use of páthos for comouere.