The machine of the (new) world: the poem Vila Rica, by Cláudio Manuel da Costa

Abstract

In the heroic poem Vila Rica (1773), Cláudio Manuel da Costa addresses the pacification of the War of the Emboabas and the founding of the first towns in the Captaincy of Minas Gerais. Although he does not employ the ottava rima used in The Lusiads, the author makes several allusions to Luís de Camões’s masterpiece. Among these, two are of great importance to the poem’s narrative structure: the giant Itamonte appears in the Minas landscape as the brother of Adamastor, likewise intent on preventing the conquerors’ passage; and, in the midst of the backlands, a marvelous contrivance offers the hero a revelation of future glories, just as in the Isle of Love the “machine of the world” is revealed to Vasco da Gama. In the Luso-Brazilian work, however, both episodes are redirected toward the specific circumstances of settlement and colonization in the New World, and in particular toward the theme of melancholy, associated with the violence of economic exploitation, in contrast with the prospect of a civil order, which the author links to the very craft of poetry.