«A quantas gentes vês porás o freio»: o outro n’Os Lusíadas

Abstract

The present essay observes in Luís Vaz de Camões’s masterpiece The Lusiads the inventory of information regarding non-European and non-Christian people – Africans, Indians and Muslims. Therefore, it aims at understanding the characteristics and contradictions of their images. Also, it searches for establishing relations between those images and Portuguese interests and identities in a time which marked the birth of the concept of humanity.