Gabriel Pereira de Castro (7 February 1571 – 18 March 1632) was a Portuguese priest, lawyer and poet.

Biography

Gabriel Pereira de Castro was born in

Braga Braga (; ) is a cities of Portugal, city and a Municipalities of Portugal, municipality, capital of the northwestern Portugal, Portuguese Braga (district), district of Braga and of the historical and cultural Minho Province. Braga Municipality ...

on 7 February 1571. He became a priest there. He then studied law at the

University of Coimbra The University of Coimbra (UC; , ) is a Public university, public research university in Coimbra, Portugal. First established in Lisbon in 1290, it went through a number of relocations until moving permanently to Coimbra in 1537. The university ...

.Gabriel Pereira de Castro at Projecto Vercial
/ref> Later, he was a professor there. He died on 18 October 1632 in

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

Works

Law

Pereira de Castro wrote some books about law.

Poetry

He is, however, known chiefly for his

epic poem In poetry, an epic is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. With regard to ...

''Ulisseia ou Lisboa Edificada'' (''Ulysses or Lisbon Built''). It consists of ten books and is written in

ottava rima Ottava rima is a rhyming stanza form of Italian origin. Originally used for long poems on heroic themes, it later came to be popular in the writing of mock-heroic works. Its earliest known use is in the writings of Giovanni Boccaccio. The ottav ...

, a

rhyming A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of rhyming (''perfect rhyming'') is consciously used for a musica ...

stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian ''stanza'', ; ) is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes, but they are not required to have either. ...

form of

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

origin. Its form is typical for

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

epic poems. The poem imitates ''The Lusiads'' by

Luís Vaz de Camões Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archai ...

. It is about the founding of the town of

by Ulysses (

Odysseus In Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology, Odysseus ( ; , ), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses ( , ; ), is a legendary Greeks, Greek king of Homeric Ithaca, Ithaca and the hero of Homer's Epic poetry, epic poem, the ''Odyssey''. Od ...

). Published posthumously in 1636 by the poet's brother, Luís Pereira de Castro, ''Ulisseia'' is considered to be one of the most significant Portuguese epic poems after Camões.William Hayley, An essay on epic poetry : in five epistles to the Revd. Mr. Mason. With notes, London 1782, p. 277.
/ref> Pereira de Castro also wrote poems in Latin and Spanish.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pereira de Castro, Gabriel 1571 births 1632 deaths 17th-century educators 17th-century non-fiction writers 17th-century Portuguese male writers 17th-century Portuguese poets 17th-century writers in Latin Academic staff of the University of Coimbra Epic poets Legal writers Multilingual poets Neo-Latin poets People from Braga Portuguese male non-fiction writers Portuguese male poets Spanish-language poets Spanish-language writers from Portugal University of Coimbra alumni Writers from Lisbon