author
active 1589-1619 Bartolomeu Varela
Remembered as one of the four students behind a playful late-16th-century parody of Camões, this elusive Portuguese writer survives in literary history through wit rather than biography. Very little about his life is firmly documented, which gives his small surviving footprint an unusual charm.
1 Audiobook
Paródia ao primeiro canto dos Lusíadas de Camões por quatro estudantes de Évora em 1589
by Manuel Luiz Freire, Manuel do Valle de Moura, active 1589-1619 Bartolomeu Varela, active 1608 Luís Mendes de Vasconcelos
About the author
Bartolomeu Varela was a Portuguese writer active around the late 1500s and early 1600s. The biographical details that can be confirmed are sparse: reference sources identify him simply as active between 1589 and 1619, and place him in Portugal.
He is chiefly associated with Paródia ao primeiro canto dos Lusíadas de Camões por quatro estudantes de Évora em 1589, a collaborative comic reworking of the opening of Camões' great epic. In library and public-domain records, Varela appears as one of the four student authors linked to that spirited parody, alongside Manuel Luiz Freire, Manuel do Valle de Moura, and Luís Mendes de Vasconcelos.
Because so little secure personal information seems to survive, Varela is best approached through the company he kept and the literary joke he helped create. Even with only a faint archival trace, his name remains attached to a lively example of Portuguese student wit and Renaissance-era parody.