Lições [Lessons], undoubtedly Lapa’s most influential work (judging from the number of editions) and his book with the widest scope, features a carefully selected, annotated bibliography per chapter. From the book’s 466 text pages, around half are devoted to troubadour poetry.

The whole book, particularly the chapters devoted to Galician-Portuguese lyric, reflects an impulse for narrative history which collides with the scarcity, at the time of its publication, of archival studies enabling a perception of the chronological flow. This impulse is particularly remarkable in the way Lapa advances alternative explanations for the same phenomenon than in the summary listing of literary “facts”.

It is mainly from the publication of Lições onwards that it is worth reflecting on one of the more constant issues in history, that of periodology. Seen as “the main tool to understand significant changes” (Le Goff, “História” [History], 1984, 178), periodisation has featured as a central issue in the reflection on a literary history somewhat crystallised by four procedures defined by Helena Buescu: the univocal classification of the author and his work; the clear distinction between successive periods; the homogenisation of the internal features of a specific period; the linearisation of the passage of time. Lapa was not insensitive to the problems raised by this view and on several occasions sought to describe and challenge the nature of change. The Arthurian cycle is thereby said to follow on from the Carolingian empire “as a more refined pleasure”  (Lições de literatura portuguesa, 239) and in the late 14th century a renaissance of chivalry was seen, encouraged by the English presence in the court of Aviz , which should be borne in mind when reflecting on the knightly upbringing of Nuno Álvares Pereira and the existence of chivalric literature in Portugal. (Lições…, 1981, 272).

However, his latent reflection on change is evidenced particularly in the inclusion of several texts that are usually excluded from the histories of Portuguese literature due to the embarrassment they may cause regarding the period in which they were composed, the nationality of their authors and the features of the language used to write such texts.  A pivotal time indeed, the so-called “Galician-Castilian” period comprehends the century between 1350 and 1450 and applies to the troubadour activity developed after the compilation of the Galician-Portuguese cancioneiro made by conde Dom Pedro de Barcelos [count Dom Pedro of Barcelos].

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