Bordalo Pinheiro and Luís de Camões: contributions to the creation of a national symbol

Abstract

Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (1846-1905) was a caricaturist and humoristic journalist who reported on the social and political events of late 19th-century Portugal in the pages of his newspapers. During this period, Luís de Camões was elevated to the status of national symbol, in a process that had two defining moments: the commemoration of the 300th anniversary of his death in 1880 and the popular reaction of indignation to the British ultimatum of 1890.The text offers a look at Bordalo’s contribution to consolidating the figure of Luís de Camões as a Portuguese national symbol. It does not seek to provide a literary or biographical analysis of the poet, but rather to examine how a humorous newspaper reported on the process of transforming the poet into a symbolic figure of Portuguese nationality, but also of popular republicanism.