Milton in Portuguese: A Story in Blank Verse

This chapter surveys all printed Portuguese translations of Paradise Lost. The translational journey begins in the late eighteenth century, at a time when epic poetry was still the literary genre that, most of all, represented and identified a nation, and blank verse had become, once more, a major means of poetic imitation and expression in Portuguese. The translational journey from neoclassical standards to Portuguese and Brazilian Romanticism through its last instantiation in 2014 courses through the various attempts at translating Paradise Lost and the influence of such attempts on the development of later literature, especially long poems. This chapter examines questions raised by Portuguese translators and their collaborators about epic poetry, blank verse, and the closely linked issues of religion, literary politics, and art.