Future islands: weaving the utopian-imperial discourse (Pero Vaz de Caminha, Thomas Morus, Luis de Camões, José de Anchieta, António Vieira e Gregório de Matos)

Abstract

Empire and utopia have always been intimately linked. This article deals with a utopian-imperial discourse,
which was created through various lusophone texts, protagonists and images at the beginning of the early
modern period. This discourse was characterized both spatially, for instance, as a quasi-ideal island, and
temporally, as a better future. As this article observes, the discourse tends to shift from the vision of a
hopeful space in the 16th century to the understanding of a desired future time in the 17th century. Such a
change seems to stand in direct connection with the closing cartographic gaps in the European
imagination. Moreover, this utopian-imperial discourse already bears the signs of what is modernity would
later call “dystopia”, envisioning even better functioning empires with more perfected slave systems. The
article’s textual analysis ranges from the first documents of the so-called “finding of Brazil” – the letter by
Pero Vaz de Caminha (1500) and the Planisfero de Cantino (ca. 1502) – to Thomas More’s Vtopia (1516),
Luis de Camões Os Lusíadas (1572), and José de Anchieta’s Arte de grammatica (1595). It also includes
António Vieira’s História do futuro (1649/1718) and Gregório de Matos’ poems from the end of the 17th
century.