Having founded the Chair of Camonian Studies at the School of Arts and Humanities in Coimbra (1976), Aníbal de Castro would go on to lead it until his retirement in 2006. His Camonian knowledge, from which several generations of students benefited, was mainly reflected in a collection of essays entitled Páginas de um honesto estudo camoniano [Pages from and honest study of Camões] , which was published in 2010 and which, in its very title, reflects a whole programme of university verticality. In it, we can find, among other studies, a systematic analysis of the role of mythology in the lyric; in it, we can see issues of complex intertextuality analysed in an innovative and convincing manner, such as the relationship between Camonian lyric and the peninsular poetic tradition or the contiguity between the account of the sinking of the Galleon Grande São João and the Camonian retelling of that story in Canto V of Os Lusíadas . Opening that same work, we also find a valuable text summarising the poet’s life and work. This essay was originally intended to appear in an Encyclopaedia. It was later published in paperback by the Camões Institute and was widely distributed. His interest in the author of Os Lusíadas is also attested to by the creation of the Interuniversity Centre for Camonian Studies, which he directed for several years.

His particular fondness for the figure and work of António Vieira began during his stay in Italy, benefiting from two factors: his knowledge of the codes of the European Baroque and his physical proximity to the documents preserved in that country ’ s archives. The research that he would later pursue as part of his doctorate opened up new perspectives that he cultivated throughout his academic career and which would materialise in a series of studies (scattered throughout periodicals and collective publications), dealing with the codes that underpin Vieira ’ s thought and also the artistic nature of his writing. The painstaking labour he put into the life and work of this author would lead to the mature synthesis he wrote for a wider audience , which saw the light of day at the CTT Collectors ’ Club.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | (Pdf)