Epos und Periplous: Dichtung und Dokumentation in Camões’ Lusíadas

In Luis de Camoes's epic The Lusiads, diverse semantic levels of writing overlap. The intertwining of poetry and documentation results here in perspectives on writing that judge it in different ways, since a tension springs up in The Lusiads between poetry and the new fields of knowledge concerning experimental 'New Science' and nautical experience. With respect to the poetics of The Lusiads, this tension becomes evident when a line is drawn from the Renaissance to classical antiquity. A further level of writing can be seen in the field of the shipping of writings - primarily of the founding work of The Lusiads - which was, from a textually external point of view and from that of the history of the media - facilitated by book printing;conversely, the process of writing down ships, that is, their routes registered on maps and in the periplus, manifests itself in Camoes's epic in the form of a documentary mode of writing