The renaissance portraits of two kings and one cardinal

• Autor(a) principal: Relvas, Maria de Jesus
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/4978
• topic: Biography; Laudatio; Vituperatio; Exemplum

At a time when the word biography had not yet been coined, the written portraits were called 'Lives' and contain such an abundance of puzzling elements that one is led to wonder about the characters created by the authors and the intentions they had to shape them in such a way. The Renaissance concepts of history, literature, fiction and factual truth, as well as the authors’ special involvement in their narratives are substantially different from those ones prevailing in the precedent and posterior ages, and are in part responsible for the textual peculiarities. Bearing all these aspects in mind, the essay approaches the 'Lives' of Richard III, Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey, written by Thomas More, Francis Bacon and George Cavendish, respectively, and the elaborate ways the three authors approached and shaped their subjects.