Novel
Maiden and Modest
Menina e Moça
Bernardim Ribeiro · 1554
Synopsis
A young woman, taken as a child far from her mother's house, lives alone in a remote place. A lady from times past comes to her and tells her of the misfortunes of that land: the arrival of the knight Lamentor, who came from distant lands with Belisa and her sister Aónia; the love of a knight who, in order to approach Aónia, becomes a shepherd and takes the name Binmarder; then that of Avalor for Arima, Belisa's daughter. The narrator listens, and recognises her own sorrow in these loves.
Context
The book appeared in 1554 in Ferrara, from Abraão Usque, an exiled Portuguese Jewish printer who published almost only Jewish authors: if Hélder Macedo's hypothesis, which makes the author a crypto-Jew, is false, this would be the only work by a non-Jew to come off that press. A second edition appeared in Évora in 1557, from André de Burgos, under the title Saudades, with a second part whose chapters XVIII to LVIII are held to be a continuation by another hand. The usual title takes up the first words of the narrative. The first French translation, by Cécile Lombard, appeared in 2003.
Who it is for
A short, unfinished narrative, in a sixteenth-century Portuguese laden with archaisms; the embedded stories are left without resolution, and several names are anagrams.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the first pastoral novel of the Iberian Peninsula; chosen in 2016 by the Diário de Notícias among the fifty essential works of Portuguese literature.
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