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In the early years of Romanticism, romance, the long narrative poem of medieval origins, is taken as a model for literary inovation. However, though romance – which in the Iberian Peninsula relates to the local tradition of the hispanic ballad – is in the spotlight, epic poetry would be kept in the horizon. We try to show how paratexts of Portuguese and Brazilian narrative poems, while not only expressing intentions of genre affiliation, but also constructing the work and its author and negotiating a place for them in the literary field, reflect on this situation.