Castilho, António Feliciano de

Castilho, António Feliciano de

(born Jan. 28, 1800, Lisbon—died June 18, 1875, Lisbon) Portuguese poet. Though blind from childhood, he became a classical scholar and by age 16 was publishing poems, translations, and pedagogical works. With his Obras completas (1837; “Complete Works”), he became a literary figure in Lisbon. As director of the important journal O panorama and later of the major cultural review Revista universal Lisbonense, he became a central figure in the Portuguese Romantic movement. After 1850 he gradually returned to a genteel traditionalism. His lifeless style so dominated literary taste that it provoked a rebellion by younger writers, and he was dethroned as literary arbiter.

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Castilho, António Feliciano de 

Born Jan. 28, 1800, in Lisbon; died there June 18, 1875. Portuguese poet.

Castilho’s first collections of idyllic poetry were Letters of Echo to Narcissus (1821) and Spring (1822). The narrative poems Night in the Castle (1836) and Jealousy of the Bard (1838) and the collection Autumn (1863) reflect romantic trends. Elegiac motifs and descriptions of nature are characteristic of Castilho’s poems. Late in life, Castilho took part in the “Coimbra question,” a polemic on Portuguese literature, he defended the outmoded principles of romantic art against realism.

WORKS

Obras completas, vols. 1–80. Lisbon, 1903–10.

REFERENCE

Castelo Branco, C. Castilho-Alguns, aspectos vivos da sua obra. Lisbon, 1935.