The View from Almada Hill: Myths of Nationhood in Camões and William Julius Mickle

Abstract

Abstract: Myths of nationhood sustain both Os Lusíadas and W.J. Mickle’s very popular and influential version of it, The Lusiad (1776). But what Camões transmitted to Mickle was not only a sense of the destiny of his nation but also its deep-seated contradictions. Just as 16th-century Portugal peculiarly combined feudal and mercantile values, so did 18th-century Scotland, and in converting an epic of humanism into an epic of commerce, liberty, and civilization, Mickle expressed the tensions of an enlightened age. “Almada Hill” (1781) superimposes a vision of modern Britain on the Portuguese past and present.