The Genius of the Shore: Lycidas, Adamastor, and the Poetics of Nationalism

Abstract

A collaboration between poetry and nationalism, exemplified by the tutelary border guard or “genius of the shore,” accounts for the interest of many Renaissance poems; redrawing the map, poets express the myths and grievances that hold their nations together. In “Lycidas,” Milton tries to redeem the fatal voyage of Edward King, his Anglo-Irish friend, by renewing the ideal of a missionary spirit, joining poet, saint, and soldier in a protectorate to bridge Ireland and England. In The Lusiads, Camões personifies the Cape of Storms as the titan Adamastor (“Unconquerable”), who curses the audacity of da Gama's voyagers and predicts their future calamities; hence the figure represents both the glory and the self-pity of Portugal and of its national poet. Though Milton and Camões hope for a bright colonial future, they turn their faces, like Benjamin's Angel of History, toward memories of shipwreck in the past.

Pietas in Patriam: Milton’s Classical Patriotism

“…In doing so, not only does he reassert God's providence to men but also England's British destiny, in terms of the story of Rome. What animates the poem's nationalism is not so much the sense of grievance and resentment on which Lawrence Lipking wants to dwell but a specifically Virgilian form of pietas (Lipking 1996). 63 As the optimism of Mansus suggests, this counter-pessimistic strain in Lycidas grows in strength and flourishes the following year, in conversation with his Italian patron, the fatherly Manso.…”

Milton’s Two-Handed Engine as a Conceptual Metaphor

“…Additional details are available inLipking (1996), "The Genius of the Shore. "2 The book was published in 1638 as Justa Eduardo King Naufrago.…”