The portuguese dactylic hexameter: an overview

Abstract

This paper investigates the practice of Lusophone translators of employing the Portuguese dactylic hexameter, a practice that dates back to the eighteenth century. A key figure was Carlos Alberto Nunes, whose practice in the middle of the twentieth century differs a little from that of his predecessors (such as Nolasco da Cuinha and Júlio de Castilho, among others), as he avoids the substitution of trochees with dactyls and also changes his way of making the caesura. It can be argued that Nunes anticipated the twenty-first century trend of translating ancient epic in vernacular hexameters. His translations influenced Brazilian poetry in the fifties and continue to provide inspiration to contemporary researchers and translators of classical poetry, not only epic, but also elegy and lyric, in Brazil.