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Part of
A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery: The Atlantic world and beyond
Edited by Madeleine Dobie, Mads Anders Baggesgaard and Karen-Margrethe Simonsen
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXVI] 2024
► pp. 259–275

Chapter 14
Bárbora and Jau

Slavery in the life and poetry of Luis de Camões

This chapter examines two contrasting emotional responses to enslaved people in the writing of the Portuguese Renaissance poet Luís de Camões. On the one hand, Bárbora, the captive woman made famous in a lyrical poem by Camões, stands for the golden age of Portuguese discoveries and its open-mindedness towards far-off exotic civilizations; on the other, Camões depicts Jau, the Javanese slave he owned for about a decade, in a way that suggests social conservatism and indifference. In the nineteenth century, many Romantic authors and artists, inspired by the figure of the noble savage and a new emphasis on emotional bonds, highlighted the importance of these two slaves in the life of Camões.
Keywords: Portuguese empire, Luís de Camões, Romanticism, lyric poetry, exoticism
Article outline
  • Camões’s early life: Slavery and social hierarchies
  • Camões and Bárbora
  • Camões and Bárbora in the light of Romanticism
  • Camões and Jau
  • Conclusion
  • Author queries
  • References
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References (18)
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