Love in female voices: From Cantigas de Amigo to Bernardim Ribeiro’s Menina e Moça and their invocation in Nuno Bragança’s fiction

Tradition and innovation are a couple of words that became inseparable throughout the History of Humanity. In literature, this combination is mandatory due to the writer’s duty to consider tradition in his creations, but at the same time, be original. Nuno Bragança’s writing was rightly considered a modernity’s Portuguese literature landmark due to its innovation. However, this innovation does not reject tradition; it integrates it, constituting a kind of author’s canon. Through various procedures, Bragança places himself in a chain of peers over time while giving the elements brought from the tradition new meanings and functionalities, which can be starting points for the successors. This chapter intends to show how the invocation of medieval Cantigas de Amigo and Bernardim Ribeiro’s Menina e Moça, in Bragança’s fiction, works towards building new concepts of love, eroticism, and sexuality, which should revolutionize their experience for both genders. Simultaneously, gender equality is promoted by establishing women as subjects of voice, desire, and action, in a world that only assigned them secondary roles and passive attitudes. In short, the attribution of a voice to women in Bragança’s fiction follows a centuries-old tradition. However, it also works as a cry for women’s liberation and emancipation in a struggle that was ongoing at the time and has not yet ended.