The reception of the classic vergilian epos in the sacred and tragicomic poem Eustachidos, ascribed to Frei Manuel de Santa Maria Itaparica

Abstract

The present article proposes an analysis of the sacred and tragicomic poem Eustachidos, by Frei Manuel de Santa Maria Itaparica, investigating the generic configuration of the work, according to preceptists such as Torquato Tasso (1964), Giovanni Savio (1601) and Francisco José Freire (1759), and its reception of the classic vergilian epic models from the Georgics and the Aeneid. Looking at the practical systems of representation that were part of the discursive field of the seventeenth century Portuguese Americas, we sought rhetorical-poetic and theological-political solutions for the generic definition of the work (as sacred and tragicomic) and for the decorum of the res and uerba in the poem when conveniently emulating the epic models of the Georgics and Aeneid, staging dynamic operations with a certain tradition, whose representative effects we believe to be analogous to that of the ancient alexandrianism. We believe that the care with these residues that have come to us, but which are still to receive  greater attention, is important so that we reach more complex understandings of the literate practices of the seventeenth-century Portuguese Americas and of the colonial discursive field.