Fernão Lopes

Main masterpieces:   

• Crónica de D. Pedro
• Crónica de D. Fernando
• Crónica de D. João

Historical period in literature: 

Medieval literature, period of courtly poets and chroniclers

 

The Artist's Prose

The fundamental characteristic of Fernão Lopes is his powerful visualism: his entire feature’s writer, friend of the truth and clarity, tend to show to us the right thing and how it happened. Through the dialogue in acts, we see the figures, we determine their distinctive features. And as if that were not enough, he is the author who invites us to attentive contemplation.

This tendency to the visual and to the concrete doesn’t deprive, in Lopes, a certain sense of mystery that his religion and cavalry romances had instilled in him. In large scenes, this wing of the mystery communicates to us a thrill of terror and gives them a prophetic magnitude. However, this feature of the imagination is uncommon because the literary genius of Lopes is mainly oriented to the movement and the picturesque.

But it is in describing the crowds that Lopes reaches levels that no Portuguese writer achieved so far. The picture of riots in Lisbon, on the occasion of the death of Andeiro; the behavior of the crowd full of love for the Master and operated by the old and prestigious Álvaro Pais, the mystical and burning desire that invades her for having a king, chosen by their own affection; the heroism and tribulations of the Lisbon’s siege, all this results from a marvelous intuition and it is described with a power of sympathy. The modern science of crowds finds in these pictures, strongly drawn by the chronicler, the confirmation of the most indisputable results that he has achieved; the impulsive force, blind love, cruelty, sublime dedication, in short everything that makes up the greatness and terribleness of the collective soul, exasperated at times of crisis.

Consulted sources:  

lithis
Portal da Literatura Portuguesa
infopédia_FernãoLopes 
Projecto Vercial_FernãoLopes