Furor y valor: traslaciones épicas desde Lucano hasta Anchieta y Ercilla

Abstract

The following essay is based on a comparative discussion of one of the first colonial epics, De Gestis Mendi de Sa (a Neo-Latin work written by the Brazilian Jesuit Jose de Anchieta) with the much more well-known epic about early colonial Chile, La Aracaucana, by Ercilla. Following the seminal work on classical/early modern epic by David Quint, the essay outlines how the two epics about military conflicts in Latin America are related to the generic conventions of the classical paradigms, notably Vergil’s Aeneid and Lucan’s Pharsalia. To varying degrees, both epics blend the imperial rhetoric of Virgil with the more critical language of Lucan that allows for a certain amount of sympathy with the side of the enemy. Specifically, I argue that the indigenous populations of Brazil and Chile are poetically represented with categories of both savagery and nobility –thus achieving different varieties of generic adaptation and of ideological ambivalence.