ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that strong relationship existing since the 1880s between the modernization of Portuguese literary patterns and the rise of nationalism, particularly in connection with the Republican movement. It analyses the political overtones of the modernist movement that followed the proclamation of the Republic in 1910. The chapter deals with the increasingly traditional outlook of the Portuguese authoritarian regime and the estrangement of most creative intellectuals from its appeal in the 1930s. The relationship between artistic and literary modernism, on the one hand, and right-wing authoritarianism on the other, has been noted. From an aesthetic viewpoint, Portuguese literary modernism started with Cesario Verde, who brought to Portuguese poetry the Baudelairean concern with the modern world and the new attitudes of the artist towards modernity. Fernando Pessoa's main drive towards literary modernism is of course rooted in his aesthetic concerns, rather than in any consistent political ideology.
