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

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.