Arnaldo Saraiva - O Nome de Camões na Literatura de Cordel do Brasil

Through the pure truths or invented fables of his life, or through the ingenuity and art of his work, Camões, or the name of Camões, radiates inexhaustible energies of universal myth, he who was also a creator of myths (the Old Man of Restelo, Adamastor, Pedro and Inês, the Island of Love...).

Of course, it is in the Lusitanian or Lusophone world that this myth has the greatest fortune, if, as Machado de Assis said, in very rough seas Camões saved "language, history, nation, arms, poetry." Such fortune is almost only seen in the areas of so-called high culture, which, even when it promoted him to the greatest symbol of Portugal, almost forgot his songs and villancicos and his popular aura.
Incidentally, it was from Brazil, or its Northeast, that the best evidence of Camões's popular permanence came over the last few decades. This name appears in titles and is the name of heroes or anti-heroes in chapbooks. Knowing from the Greeks how myths undergo symbolic variations over time, it's no surprise that sometimes the Northeastern Brazilian Camões only in name – symptomatically in surname – closely resembles the Portuguese poet. But the hilarious rogue, trickster, or "little yellow one" may have been born from the memory that hasn't forgotten a superior man, in adventure, love, and art. The Camões of folk poetry uses cunning, even verbal, to survive and laugh at the evils and powers that threaten him. The name Camões in the work of popular Brazilian poets implies, in some way, a tribute, quite clear in the verses of one of the best, Patativa do Assaré: "I see my smallness, / Before the Portuguese bard."