Comparing The Aeneid, The Lusiads, And The Liberation Of Jerusalem

Just as epic requires one or more central heroic figure, however, it also needs a coherent internal logic of victory and defeat with which to frame that hero’s actions. We have already noted Roy’s argument that Absalom, Absalom! questions the legitimacy of Sutpen’s dynastic goals, and that of Southern settlement. Roy then complicates this logic, framing Sutpen’s imperialist goals against those evident in other “European nationalist epics such as the Aeneid, the Lusiads, and The Liberation of Jerusalem, [where] readers are provided with raisons éternelles…for the Roman conquests, the crusades, and the Portuguese colonisation of India: namely, that these victories have been predestined through divine providence” (84). This way, the logic of “[t]he violence of conquest is…sublimated into the providence of predestination.” Here we have a problem, however. …show more content…
How, then, can something destined to fail nevertheless subscribe to an epical logic of victory? To find the answer we will need to consider this logic of victory and defeat more closely. In so doing, we will discuss whether Absalom, Absalom! is an “excluding” or “participatory” epic and what that means to its audience, as well as how defeat in epic often leads to deferred victory. These points considered, we will see that while both Sutpen and the South are doomed to fail in their respective ambitions, the means by which they fail are nevertheless consistent with the novel’s epical and deterministic internal logic of victory and