Bocage, Manuel Maria Barbosa du

Born Sept. 15, 1765, in Setubal; died Dec. 21, 1805, in Lisbon. Portuguese poet.

Bocage began to write verse in 1790, affiliating himself with the literary circle New Arcadia. He sympathized with the Great French Revolution. In 1797, an inquisitional tribunal sentenced Bocage to imprisonment in a monastery. He was the author of the anticlerical and antiabsolutist poems The Terrifying Illusion of Eternity (1837) and The Torment of Retribution (1836), satirical verses, sonnets, and pastoral elegies in the manner of L. Camō es (Poems, vols. 1–6; 1791–1842). Bocage’s poetry combines the ideals of enlightenment with an individualistic rebelliousness, prophetic of romantic poetry.