Camões Award and the (Re)Foundation of a Transnational Portuguese-Language Literary Space (1989-2018)

The main goal of this article is to rebuild both the historical and social conditions of the structuring of the transnational Portuguese-language literary space by the late 20th Century. In order to do this, we analyze a specific institution, transversal to the national fields involved by this space, the Cam & otilde;es Award, created in the 1980s by a literary-diplomatic concertation that involved mainly, but not only, the governments of Portugal and Brazil. We suggest that the creation of the award was crucial to legitimize a supranational literary community of Portuguese-speaking countries, which, although with new content, imported old geopolitical and literary frameworks.