Arcádia Lusitana

Portuguese literary society

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June 18, 2026

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The Arcádia Lusitana was an 18th-century Portuguese literary society founded in 1756 by Ant\u00f3nio Dinis da Cruz e Silva. Modeled after Rome's Academy of Arcadia, its primary goal was to revive Portuguese poetry by advocating a return to Classicism and eradicating Spanish Baroque influences. Key figures included Pedro Ant\u00f3nio Correia Gar\u00e7\u00e3o, who admired the Latin poet Horace, and Domingos dos Reis Quita, who revived native poetic traditions. Tom\u00e1s Ant\u00f4nio Gonzaga, writing as Dirceu, contributed pastoral love lyrics. A later group, the Nova Arc\u00e1dia, emerged in 1790, featuring poets like Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage and Jos\u00e9 Agostinho de Macedo.12

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…Silva and others established the Arcádia Lusitana, its first aim being the uprooting of Gongorism, a style studded with Baroque conceits and Spanish influence in general. Cruz e Silva’s mock-heroic poem O Hissope (1768), inspired by the French poet Nicolas Boileau’s mock epic Le Lutrin (1674), was a telling satirical…
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…Silva and others established the Arcádia Lusitana, its first aim being the uprooting of Gongorism, a style studded with Baroque conceits and Spanish influence in general. Cruz e Silva’s mock-heroic poem O Hissope (1768), inspired by the French poet Nicolas Boileau’s mock epic Le Lutrin (1674), was a telling satirical…
Read More