He is regarded as the patron of Portuguese exploration. He learned of the opportunity offered by the Saharan trade routes that terminated there, and became fascinated with Africa in general he was most intrigued by the Christian legend of Prester John and the expansion of Portuguese trade. He encouraged his father to conquer Ceuta (1415), the Muslim port on the North African coast across the Straits of Gibraltar from the Iberian Peninsula. Īfter procuring the new caravel ship, Henry was responsible for the early development of Portuguese exploration and maritime trade with other continents through the systematic exploration of Western Africa, the islands of the Atlantic Ocean, and the search for new routes. Henry was the fourth child of King Dom John I of Portugal, who founded the House of Aviz. Through his administrative direction, he is regarded as the main initiator of what would be known as the Age of Discovery. The narrative sequence of cantos nine and ten, in which sexual coupling between Gama's sailors and the nymphs inhabiting the island is followed by a collective marriage ceremony (and culminates in a prophecy of Portuguese imperial greatness) is shown to reverberate in the unresolved contradiction of Freyre's argument, with its simultaneous endorsement of the colonial contract viewed as a monogamous conjugal union and as polygamous multiplication of procreative opportunity.Dom Henrique of Portugal, Duke of Viseu (4 March 1394 – 13 November 1460), better known as Prince Henry the Navigator ( Portuguese: Infante Dom Henrique, o Navegador), was a central figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire and in the 15th-century European maritime discoveries and maritime expansion. The "Isle of Love" episode of The Lusiads may be read as an implicit antecedent of Freyre's insistence on amorous underpinnings of the Lusotropical continuum. In this fantasy, regularly reiterated in Freyre's writings, the figure of Camões came to play an increasingly prominent role. Gilberto Freyre's doctrine of Lusotropicalism, arguably the most influential of twentieth-century discourses legitimizing the survival of the Portuguese empire, was rooted to a significant degree in a foundational fantasy of erotic encounter between white explorers and Asian or African women.
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