What's in a tittle?: Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), de Elizabeth Browning enquanto Pseudotradução (Camoniana) e Pseudo-antologia de Cariz Anglo-Português

Abstract

In 1850, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (née MoultonBarrett, 1806–1861) published, in her anthology Poems, the series of sonnets entitled “Sonnets from the Portuguese”, which would later be published in a single volume. The series’ title suggests the exercise of an Anglo-Portuguese pesudotranslation, a fictional device that I analyze in this article, alongside the ‘anthologization’ of Portuguese poems supposedly translated by Browning. The sonnets were fictionally attributed to the ‘Portuguese’ Catarina (loved by Camões) to whom Browning had previously attributed a voice and amorous agency in her famous poem “Catarina to Camoens”, and therefore I also analyze the cult of Camões’ sonnets in England, especially after the publication of the anthology edited and translated by Lord Langford, Poems from the Portuguese of Luis de Camoens (1803)