How many lives does have Camões? Rasurant survivals and representations of homoerotic love in the ficcion of Frederico Lourenço

Abstract

This article proposes a reading of the short story by Frederico Lourenço – fiction writer, translator, researcher and professor at the University of Coimbra –, “O retrato de Camões” (2005, from A formosa pintura do mundo). In this text, Camões is revisited and gains short-lived survivals, insofar as it becomes a fundamental axis for a careful reflection on forms of love that are not consistent with heteronormative norms, due of a present homoeroticism, now explicit, now subtle. It is intended to question how the Camonian character, in his shifts from the condition of myth to a human condition, as emphasized by Eduardo Lourenço (1999), contributes to thinking about the multiple possibilities of being in the world of 21st century Portuguese man from another love experience, which dares to say its name.