Why Print Poetry?

The 1590s saw what has come to be known as the ‘lyric’ poetry of many of the writers in this book printed for the first time. This chapter investigates the rush of activity in Lisbon’s print houses as the century came to a close, focusing especially on why the many individuals involved in the print trade chose to print poems that had been circulating, sometimes widely, in manuscript for quite some time. It sets out a distaste for love poetry that was frequently articulated in Inquisitorial printing licences and in the paratexts to other books printed in the period, before tracing how the terms of approval for non-devotional poetry began to shift towards the end of the sixteenth century. Three principal justifications for printing collections of poetry were presented in the period. The first involved using print to disseminate a vision of the best of the Portuguese language, simultaneously to those outside the nation, who doubt its capacity as a vehicle for ideas, and to native speakers of the language, who might learn from its most able and elegant practitioners, i.e. poets. The second reason relates more closely to the change in medium in question: editors and printers argued that print was a means of tackling the errors introduced by manuscript dissemination. The third and final justification was the desire to make a name for a poet, which ties in closely with the other justifications for print, because establishing an individual’s renown required settling their oeuvre and often involved claiming them as a national icon.