| Summary: | Despite the almost total absence of studies on the matter, the canon of 16th century Portuguese poetry cannot be understood without carefully considering the socio-political impact of both the Monarchical Union (1580‑1640) and contemporary Spanish and Hispano-american literature. At the time, opinions in Portugal concerning the relative value of the country's poets fluctuated between isolationist and Iberian positions, in ways that have yet to be explored in concrete terms. Symptomatic is the case of the implicit literary criticism produced by João Soares de Alarcão (1580‑1618), a Portuguese author who spent his entire life under the Hapsburg monarchy. His Crowned Infant (1606) includes a catalogue of poets accompanied by short commentaries which help us understand the ways in which the Portuguese poetic canon changed between Philip II of Spain’s accession to the throne of Portugal and the War of Restoration. We will compare this catalogue with several of its predecessors, namely the lists of poets praised in verse and prose by Diogo Bernardes (1560‑68), Pêro de Magalhães Gândavo (1574), the so-called «Penniless Student» (ca. 1591‑93) and António de Ataíde (ca. 1600).
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