An “onça” threatens Clarimundo’s fate

Abstract

Very young, but already a “gentleman of the bedchamber” to Prince João, King Manuel's son, João de Barros (1496-1570) wrote the Chronicle of Emperor Clarimundo (1522). Contrary to his expectations that with it he would simply “train his pen for works of broader scope”, the narrative was reprinted several times. A well-structured text, it follows Clarimundo’s development in arms and in love, from birth to royalty and loss of his son D. Sancho. His “adventures”, filled with images and symbols, go beyond the 16th-century historical panorama in which they are anchored. In one of them, with far-reaching implications, Clarimundo confronts a jaguar (“onça”), an animal whose difficulty in identification begins with the etymology of the word. This is what this paper aims to examine.