Os enigmas do amor: recepção e tradução dos sonetos de Shakespeare na ponte Inglaterra-Brasil

Abstract

This article focuses on the Sonnets, written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. Due to the many controversies surrounding their themes, this lyrical work has stirred the curiosity and polemics among the public and the critics since its first publication in 1609. This article intends to verify how such controversies have shaped the public reception of the Sonnets in England and especially in Brazil, where the translators’ initiative of rendering them into Portuguese, as well as the interest of local critics, occured timidly at a rather late stage in comparison with Shakespeare’s plays. In order to exemplify how Brazilian translators deat with such controversies, a brief contrastive analysis of sonnet 144 and four Portuguese re-readings will be presented ([1957]; 1969; [1970]; 1994).