ENTRE LUZES E ROMANTISMO: A ESTÉTICA HEDONISTA DO LICEU DAS DAMAS, DE GARRETT, E A REFLEXÃO SOBRE «POESIA» QUE PROPÕE

Abstract

This manuscript by Almeida Garrett (belonging to the Biblioteca Geral da Universidade de Coimbra), first started around 1822-32 and resumed later on (and which still remains, nowadays, greatly unknown), aims at placing its poetry lessons, written in a light and courteous way as they are intended for a “young Lady”, in the aesthetic and critic Portuguese panorama. The text is highly incomplete and, often, in its early stages of development, it allows one to document, however, a major cultural divide – the one responsible for increased expression of subjectivity and a subsequent recognition of creative freedom, born out of the sensualism of the Enlightenment, which announced the Romantic dawn. Pleasure is constantly invoked by the “master” as a criterion for life and artistic delight; his great accomplice is sentiment – an individual energy which gathers the senses’ vivacity, the insights of reason and the movements of a tender, virtuous and spiritual heart. Henceforth springs aesthetic hedonism, historical consciousness, critic relativity, the lack of “rules” and the tolerance of taste revealed by the Liceu das Damas.