Making Sense of an Ending: Camões's Odyssean Epic

Both Luís de Camões' Os Lusíadas and Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene subvert epic convention in their endings. Spenser's truncation of Guyon's quest illuminates Camões' uses of the Odyssey and the legend that Odysseus founded Lisbon on his travels. Folding a Virgilian founding myth into an Odyssean epic paradigm, Camões constructs Portuguese epic heroism from Odyssean materials. But his choice of an Odyssean paradigm also reveals the dangers and limitations of the contingent, liminal Portuguese imperial project. The Odyssey serves as the submerged counterpoint to Os Lusíadas, the tale against which that poem repeatedly measures its hero, its values, and itself.