A METáFORA EUCARíSTICA NA POESIA AO DIVINO

This text has as its purpose to highlight the poetic procedures encompassed within the “poetry to the Divine” of the 17th century in Portugal, period teemed with poems with religious motifs crafted from food metaphors. It studies the allegories deriving from those metaphors, the Eucharist theme metaphorized as sweets and fruits; and the rhetorical rules underpinning the decorum of such ornaments. The poem Cantico ao Senhor pelas frutas [Canticle to the Lord for the fruits], by Maria do Céu, is interpreted. The main concept behind the poetic theory revived in the text is the wit, understood as the embellished and skillful making of poetic genres as instructed by the 17th century rhetoric, largely drawn from ancient rhetoric.