A poetical critique of Aristotle: the role of cosmological poetry in Late-Renaissance Portugal

Abstract

This paper focus on neo-Latin cosmological poetry authored by the Portuguese philosophers and physicians Francisco Sanches, Estêvão Rodrigues de Castro and Manuel Bocarro Francês. In Renaissance Europe, cosmological poetry was often perceived as a privileged means to discuss the constitution of the heaven, its structure and the interrelations of its parts. Yet, the Portuguese case presents what seems to be a particularity in European context. Aristotelian philosophical tradition was put into question all over Renaissance Europe, but in Portugal the first sharp and comprehensive criticism of Aristotelian natural philosophy emerged exclusively in poetical contours. It was due to Sanches, Rodrigues de Castro and Bocarro Francês, whose neo-Latin cosmological poems were influenced respectively by scepticism, Neo-Platonism, Lucretian atomism, and Stoic philosophy. This paper analyses these poems and interprets them as examples of Portuguese late-Renaissance philosophical poetry as well as intellectual ways of rising against the philosophical tradition and cultural hegemony put in place by Counter-Reformation movement.