Making Sail and Making Race in Early Modern Portuguese Literature

In a brief overview of major works of medieval and early modern Portuguese literature, I posit that white Portuguese writers’ ethnoracial self-concept was inextricably tied to seafaring, with maritime narrative forms and the oceanic imaginary playing an outsized role in literary racialization. I also approach early modern print culture as a key visual index of ethnonautical thinking in the Lusosphere. Concluding with a brief analysis of works produced by or in the voice of minoritized speakers, I wager that populations who suffered enduring oceanic traumas at the hand of Portuguese colonizers would later reclaim maritime literature as their own.