Retórica política quinhentista: o mito na caracterização da adulatio e do adulator

DOI: https://doi.org/10.34640/univmadeiracjhs1soares

Abstract

Medieval allegorical interpretations of classical mythology continued into the Quattrocento, notably in the fifteen books of Giovanni Boccaccio's Genealogiae deorum gentilium, already considered the magna charta of the new universal dignity achieved by literature. Thus, from the dawn of the Renaissance, a period when Greek authors were published, often in Latin translation, mythology began a remarkable journey in all areas of art. But it is in literature that myth and mythological motifs inform all genres and recur in authors from different periods, from the Middle Ages and Renaissance to modernity. In Portugal, over time, the influences of classical mythology, particularly in 16th-century literature, both Latin and vernacular, in poetry and prose, have acquired special significance in political rhetoric, where the mythical personification of non-humanistic values, such as adulatio and adulator, flattery and flatterer, takes place, imprinting emotional enargeia and argumentative force on the denunciation of their pernicious action.