La construcción mítica del Quinto Imperio portugués entre sus orígenes y la crisis de la modernidad

Myths about the fate of the Portuguese nation have had different interpretations throughout their literary tradition and often were adapted to the political circumstances and the discursive needs in each period. Genres such as historiography, epic, sermon and poetry had taken advantage of this mythical repertoire to create texts that were decisive in the construction of Portuguese national identity. The bases of the Fifth Empire’s utopian myth can be traced from the earliest Portuguese literature and derive in the most complex reprocessings of Portuguese modern literature. This paper reviews the most important texts within the evolution and resignification of this myth depending on its historical-literary contexts.